


Gravestones

by Eightpoundsofhair



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Angst With A Bittersweet Ending, F/F, Ghosts, Internalized Homophobia, Mentions of Abusive Relationships, minor depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 51,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24205816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eightpoundsofhair/pseuds/Eightpoundsofhair
Summary: When Lapis’s roommates kick her out of their apartment there is nothing she can find the time to feel something towards. Yet after discovering what she can only assume is a ghost in the cemetery of her new town she isn’t so sure about that anymore.
Relationships: Lapis Lazuli/Peridot (Steven Universe)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 93





	1. Chapter 1

Lapis was going through an interesting stretch of life. 

For the time being she was still _technically_ enrolled in school, had not just two months left of the semester but two years before she was supposed to graduate, but at that point she had more or less stopped going entirely. 

Every once and a while she made it to the random 3pm Tuesday short fiction lecture. Every once and a while she would stray onto campus to print an assignment she would never turn in and had spent less than ten minutes on. Every once and a while she would sit under the tree outside of the dorm building she had lived in last year, staring emptily at the sidewalk until the passing freshmen started giving her nervous looks.

But as of Wednesday she wasn’t sure if even _that_ would continue any longer.

She wasn’t sad by it; university had, so far, not gone how it had gone for everyone else. Had not gone how she expected. 

She had always thought she liked English, had always thought she wanted to be a journalist, but now she was pretty confident that she hated it. She had always thought she would like her peers, had always thought she would like the other kids in her classes, the other wanna be novelists who begrudgingly listened when told that they should pursue something more realistic, but now she was pretty positive that they were all insufferable, snarky little know it all incels who loved to speak down at her. She had always thought she would like her professors, had always imagined herself spending long, needless days in their office hours, speaking eloquently on some obscure French poem, but they had only managed to get on her nerves by encouraging the boys’ insufferable behavior. Had only proved themselves insufferable, too, by appeasing their simple takes on what they were reading, by bashing her writing style and criticizing her research topics. 

She had always thought she was a sociable person, had always considered herself an extrovert, had always seen herself as friendly and charismatic, but she had yet to make any real friends. Those few who she had made were not close, were not the fast best friends she had been expecting, were by no means the wonderful bonded-at-the-hip friends she had hoped to find quickly and not be parted with for the next four years. Instead they were only temporary acquaintances who she knew only spent time with her because they too had yet to find a real social circle. And even those few who she had begun to think were halfway decent had eventually stopped meeting her for dinner, had stopped inviting her out, had kicked her out of the apartment they split three ways just five blocks from campus.

So when they did it, when they kicked her out, those two girls she had met first semester freshmen year in an elective psychology course, those two girls she had thought had been her only real friends on campus, kicked her out of the apartment to invite their other, better friend they had met _this_ semester in and elective physiology course she wasn’t hurt. 

Really, she wasn’t; it had honestly been a long time coming. 

Besides, the new place she found the very same day, while in a whole new town, nearly an hour bike ride away, was much bigger than that shitty apartment in the downtown of a college town. It would certainly be quieter, no wannabe frat boys living above her, no crybaby homebodies below.

It was at the very least prettier. An old building, apparently it had been one of the first built in this town, sitting at the end of the block, at the top of a hill with only acres of hilly land and a distant two lane highway behind. And while it hadn’t exactly been well kept, had chipped paint, a horribly untamed lawn and a leaky roof it was big and spoke largely of the Victorian ideals of the past. Pretty curved windows, tall proud roof, a chunky old oak tree in the front yard. It would have maybe inspired her before, in another time when she had less worries and more emotions. A fantastical old building, one she could easily take to the heights of literary romanticism, write lavish ghost stories or historical fiction about.

But for now all she could really find in it to care about was the fact that the rundown state of it made the rent so cheap that she could afford to keep it all to herself. 

Although, truthfully, even then she really just felt neutral on the whole situation. It was all she could find to describe her feelings when she stood on the driveway a day later, looking up at the tall, old, broken home with a hastily packed suitcase in hand to where she would now reside. 

She supposed she would stop going to school once and for all now that it was so far away. She supposed she would cut ties with her old roommates now that they proved themselves to be vapid, flaky friends. She supposed that she would have to find a new job. She supposed she should formally quit her old one. She supposed she would have to find a new routine of her days, have to find her way around this new town, around a new home which she had not even yet been inside of for more than ten minutes. 

But none of that concerned her yet. She would figure it out in time; she would find something to care about in time. All she wanted to do now was lie in her new room next to the three boxes which contained all of her possessions, and nap. 

**

The first thing Lapis felt somewhat tangibly about when considering this new, interesting stretch of life was the fact that she lived about three blocks away from the town’s cemetery. 

She had found it on accident, wandering her new town at nearly three in the morning on the second night of her stay. She stumbled upon it rather quickly, having taken a narrow street at random all the way to the end, and at the sight, at her notice of the little misshapen archway announcing what it was, just a block or so away, she felt almost excited. 

Lapis had always liked the cemetery. As long as she could remember she had enjoyed them. 

Back when she was a young girl she had enjoyed running through them, scared of what lay under her feet but happy to feel that way. Excited by the spookiness, like Halloween but real. Back when she was in middle school, trying hard to be cool by being so unaffected. She had spent long hours in them, writing melancholic poetry that Lapis hated to remember but felt nostalgic towards all the same. But as she aged it took on a whole new meaning. 

Life had always been interesting if Lapis was being honest. Even before all of this, even before she left for university in the first place, things had been odd and unusual and worrisome. And back in high school when her life started to get this way, to feel lackluster and uneasy, the love of the cemetery shifted.

She quickly began to find comfort in the rows of the dead, reveling in the paradox of how much life always filled them, squirrels and deer and weeds and flowers all living atop the corpses. She found comfort in their being dead, appreciative of how they warded off others, let her sit alone, or at least heavily distanced, from all others when inside. She found comfort in the dead and their heavy, absolute markers; the permanent fixtures which hardly strayed, only occasionally cracked or fell, only truly grew to change in the addition of more.

And she found comfort, too, in the stagnant air of the cemetery, solid and heavy but never changing. A comforting weight, one that could not let her mind fall away completely, would not let her forget that she walked over the former lives of others so like her, but quickly grew so familiar, so recognizable in its pressure, that it grew therapeutic; allowed for a simple distraction. 

It had become an out, a comfort when things were strange and uncomfortable, when Lapis could find nothing else in which she would like to care. Lapis had grown dependent on the land, grew into a symbiosis with it; her to visit the dead too long gone to be otherwise cared for, it to calm and collect her. 

By then she hadn’t been to a cemetery in a year and a half. Had almost forgotten all about the escape they brought her, the comfort. So at the sight of _this_ one, just a block ahead and yet to be explored, she grew nearly happy. She picked up the pace. 

Walking under it she found herself soothed, calmed yet excited as the heavy cemetery air weighed on her head, solidifying itself as she started up the path. 

It wasn’t a big cemetery by any means, being a small rural town, but it was prettier than one Lapis had ever seen before.

The road she followed was dirt, gravely and sandy, and it ran up in a literal sense, drawing Lapis slowly higher into the hills above, creating the illusion that it lead up into the mountains above, the heavy grey rock that she knew well to border her old college town, creating the illusion that it lead up to the moon, hanging loosely above the jaded, tall rock, creating the illusion that it lead up forever. And around her, of course, along the pretty little path which lead her unwaveringly upward, tombstones sat in solid lines, distanced from one another and appearing black and eerie in the dim light of the moon. They were no more than shadows, impossible to differentiate and ominous in their lack of feature, but the sight only exhilarated Lapis further. 

Suddenly she found herself overwhelmed, excited, terribly so, and she began to run up the path, watching as the black, proud rocks flew past her. 

And even when she reached the end, saddened by the actuality that the path could not go on forever, simply turned and looped back down the other half of the cemetery, she couldn’t help but heavily breathe in the cool, stern air, a smile sitting uneasily on her face. 

Maybe this town would be better than she had thought. 

**

It took Lapis a few nights to find it. A whole three evenings of wandering through the cemetery without much pause. After the first night her excitement had eased, had left her feeling once again rather indifferent, and she walked without pause; still unsteady on her feat, still wary of this new town that she had, until less than a week ago, not heard of before, worried that someone may be lurking, worried that someone might not like a _her_ lurking.

But on that night she had grown a bit more confident, was again feeling the twinkles of excitement, had grown reasonably comforted by the genuine small town niceness she had been shown so far. And while she had still planned on being wary, had still planned only a pass through the cemetery which she was inexorably drawn to, she had stalled in the middle of a field, off heavily from the small little path, caught suddenly by the sight of the moon. 

She had always felt drawn to the moon, just as she had always felt drawn to the cemetery, and in a similar manner she found comfort in its presence. Found the silvery glow it emitted, the soft dewy light of the night, entrancing. Found the combination of the cemetery and the night, of the shiny moon, wonderful enticing. 

So when she caught sight of it, suddenly noticed it when she turned at the sound of something behind her, something she shrugged off as a squirrel, she didn’t fight herself. Instead she sat where she had been walking, in the middle of a patch of grass, long and overgrown near the older stones, below her. She settled herself down quickly, sitting between the rows of gravestones and ran her hands across the blades, staring. 

It was incredibly thin, which could only be expected with it being the first night after the new moon. Yet even despite its thinness, hardly a cut in the black, just a sharp little curve sitting against the deep blue of the sky, it still gave off hot, sparkly shimmers of dim light. She stared as it shone alone and proudly, boasting to the stars around at its brightness, for a long while.

It was nothing new, nothing Lapis had not marveled at before, but she felt particularly captivated that night. Consumed by the comforting blue of the night time world, the shimmering silver of the moon, the cool of the air, the weight of the dead. 

It calmed her beyond what had always been normal; let her feel comforted and peaceful beyond what she had ever felt in one before. Let her feel soothed despite everything that had been happening, all the classes she had missed in the last few days, all the friends she had lost, all of the unpacking she had yet to start. It captivated her, was inspiring like she hadn’t felt in ages; making her want to write inexorable little pieces of prose, fantastical little descriptions that she would mock if written by another’s hand. It made her feel a bit more fond of the world which, at the moment, felt too bizarre to be admired. 

She very well could have stayed that way for hours, could very well have fallen asleep there if she had not been interrupted, but after no more than forty minutes she was pulled swiftly from her thoughts by the sound of someone clearing their throat behind her. 

She instantly jumped, scampering to her feet with a spiking of her heart beat to turn and look, her fears of small town serial killers or stone pelting ritualists returning. 

Somehow the sight that greeted her was all the more startling. 

It was not the old, creepy man she expected. Nor the satanic child she had feared. Not even a confused old lady who lived on the edge of the property. 

No, it was a woman sat atop the gravestone just a few feet from where Lapis sat. A woman dressed in lavish, outlandish, old looking clothing. A large dress, ridiculous pearls, pointy toed shoes. Hair twirled fantastically atop her head, adorned heavily, too, in pretty little jewels. Sat atop the grave, resting on the top curve, with her legs crossed politely, her hands rest gently atop them, folded ever so slightly, her face warped in displeased impatience, all of her shining silver and half translucent. 

It was a ghost, or at least Lapis could only assume. 

For the first time in a long while Lapis could not feel at all halfhearted about the situation in front of her. For the first time in a long while she screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is pretty different from caffeine addict (which I’m assuming most of you are carrying over from) but what can I say- I’ve been reading a lot of Shirley Jackson lately. Speaking of! If any of you catch my explicit (and not very subtle) reference to her work I will be proposing marriage  
> Anyways! That being said I am really enjoying this fic so far and I hope you are too! I’ve already written partway though chapter three so the next chapter should be up in probably about two weeks (maybe one if were lucky)  
> Anyway, thank you for reading! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment! I would really appreciate any feedback you have! And I hope you have a lovely day!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby’s first time writing a fic from multiple povs

Peridot Platt was angry and for good reason too. 

She had been murdered. 

Sure, by then it had been a long time. Years and years and years of stewing in her anger, wondering why she was still conscious, wondering if she really had died after all, wondering if the afterlife was just like this and everyone else was just complacent to lie in their graves sedentary. But still, even after the countless, long, never ending years which had passed she was still angry, was growing angrier with each passing day. 

Especially considering that they had buried her murderer in the grave next to her, only a few months after she herself had died. It was a cruel joke. Peridot did not find it funny. 

She had tried to cuss him out then, when she realized it was him who now occupied the space next to her. Had screamed at him through the dirt and the two layers of wood separating them as loud as she could manage, had threatened and shouted and kicked and yelled but he seemed to find it more interesting to ignore her. Or else she really _was_ the only one who still could think. 

She tried not to worry about it, tried not to wonder why they all lie empty, lie properly dead, when she felt so alive. She tried not to grow angrier with the perpetual boredom that plagued her. It was hard, though, trying to not grow increasingly bitter with time when she had nothing to do and a constant reminder of her uneasy demise just a few feet to her right.

So she took up wandering, leaving her grave as much as she could.

It was exhausting, overpoweringly draining, to leave her corpse but she fueled herself with her anger. Strayed as far from what had once been her, lying as still and vacant as the others next to _him_ , as she could; pushing herself on, powering her trips, with as much bitterness as she could manage. 

Slowly it got easier, she could stray farther, stay away for longer, and she had watched as the village changed. She watched as her land was divided up and sold to strangers, the farm to this family, the empty field behind to another, the house to a third. She watched as her home, that pretty little house that had been built fresh just for them, that had been the only good part of her time in the town, became uglier and uglier with each passing resident. She hated them, tried terribly to scream at them too, as loudly and angrily as she had at him after he had died, but they too never listened. 

She wasn’t sure why they could never see her when, long before, he had. And while it was frustrating that she couldn’t communicate with the rest of them, couldn’t do more than knock on the walls or shift a glass by a few inches, she was glad that at the very least he had seen her, before he himself had died that is. 

It hasn’t been long then, only a few months after she had died, and being still freshly dead she was confused; frightened and wholly unangry, trying desperately to place what had happened to her. That evening she felt a bit more together than she had before then, a bit more aware that she was a person, that she was Peridot, and for the first time she had managed to stray from her body. Looking back Peridot was surprised she had managed her way back home when the world felt so distorted and unfamiliar. 

She had, at the time, not been sure as to precisely where she was going. Had not recognized the town well, knew it felt familiar but could not place how, and instead she simply went, knowing only that she wanted home, wherever that was, and she tried her best to follow her instincts.

And, somehow, she made it. Knew as she turned onto her street that the tall, menacing, beautiful house at the end was what she had been looking for. It was home, her home, and slowly the details became a bit more solid. So, she had knocked, still somewhat unaware that she really was dead, still somewhat unaware that her, what she now saw of herself, what she now was, was no longer physical. So she had knocked and while it wasn’t exactly right, she could tell that much, she wasn’t sure why. 

Looking back she was surprised that he had heard her at all. At the time she was only surprised that the door swung open.

And there, with the swinging open of the door, was the missing details. There _he_ was, the man dressed in a suit even when he was home alone, the man who had always spoke with hatred, whose voice left his lips littered with malice, who had married her just for her money. The man who had belittled her and cheated her and killed her. 

It came back quickly and she was sure that she had been just as startled as him; suddenly coming to the realization that she had died, she was _dead_ , suddenly remembering that it was _his_ fault. 

He fell back onto his bottom after a moment, pulling her from her shock to look. She was happy to have seen him fall, would have felt happy to see such a foolish manner from him had she still been alive, but now, after having remembered, after having died by his hand, she was thrilled. 

She hated him. 

She never had liked him. Had married only because her father made her. She had never taken to the idea of marriage in the first place, had always looked on the prospect of it with loathing. She had wanted to go to one of the newly built women’s colleges instead, wanted to get a job, wanted to be _alone_ , or at least unmarried, but what choice did she have? Her father had decided and she had no option but to listen. And while she would have been disappointed no matter who her father had picked, had dreams for herself which she knew were unattainable, were inappropriate, she had been more displeased than she had anticipated when she was presented with him, her suitor, her soon to be husband. 

But she had had no other options and so they wed, a painful, exhausting and unpleasant day. And no more than two months later he had uprooted her from there, from her real home, and brought her somewhere new, a newly established town hours away where they had yet to build anything other than three other houses and a store. All at once he had removed her, took her from her father, who might do something about it, and her mother, who knew he wouldn’t, and _her_. Peridot hadn’t even had a chance to properly say goodbye. 

And even when she tried to be okay with it, had tried to be okay with shifting lives, with moving to the new town which, while quickly developing as several other wealthy families moved in, was unpleasant, even when she had tried to repress the desires that would have had her shunned from society, living it, married life, was even worse than she would have imagined. Because even when she hated the idea, hated him long before she had even met him, he had somehow managed to make it worse.

He had always, from the minute she had met him, from the minute her father had introduced them, been cruel to her. Spoke down to her as if she were stupid. Expected nothing but perfection in the meals she cooked and the cleaning she did. Had forced her to submit to him and do what he asked even when she wanted nothing to do with him. 

She didn’t know why her father would do nothing about it when she sent him scrambled, frustrated letters. Didn’t know why no one here would believe her when she spoke poorly of him. Didn’t know why she was undoubtedly in the wrong even when she tried as best she could to do things right. 

And yet even so, even when she tried so hard to do her job, tried to get out with the help of others, even when she gave up and did everything in her power to try and like it and him, even when he was the one who treated her like a useless child, he had the audacity to claim that _she_ was the one who made _his_ life miserable. 

He would scream at her at all hours of the day, tossing bowls onto the floor, spilling milk across the table, insisting all the while her supposed wrongdoings. Would insult her appearance, her cooking, her weight, her money. He would call her derogatory names when she walked past, when she misplaced a pen, when she left her letters in the open. He would pick at the scab that he had so easily identified, had caught onto within weeks of their marriage, even when she had thought she had hidden it so well. Had laughed in her face when Peridot noticed the woman across the street, so similar to _her_ that she couldn’t stop herself from looking, even when she knew he was watching her do so. Had sneered when he stated the fact that he had taken her three days later. Had told her quite bluntly over dinner how he wished for Peridot’s death so he could marry her. 

Peridot hated him then, had never hated anything so much before, but she was better than him. She would clean his mess and leave him be even when he insisted she did it wrong. She would let him scream at her and keep her mouth shut, would simply sit and watch, forcing herself to stay calm all the while. She would let him goad her on when he brought her over, that pretty little neighbor, sitting silently wishing to be somewhere else, someone else, while he flaunted her on his waist.

She at the very least had not killed him. Had never done more than briefly fantasized about it. 

So when he fell to the floor in fear at the sight of her ghost the hot anger which had quickly filled her whole self briefly subsided; she was thrilled. _He_ was scared of _her_. 

As he should be. 

She was saddened to find that she could not touch him. She had tried, had fallen to the floor atop him in hot anger, overcoming and burning and evil, had tried to hit him, kill him, _anything_ , but her touches did no more than leave little red marks upon his skin.

It was infuriating, she wanted nothing more than to do to him all that he had done to her but she could do nothing substantial. In a fit of frustration she had left and even when she spent most of her time after parting from him planning, trying desperately to find a way to avenge herself, to overcome this burden and actually touch him, she stayed away from the house until he had died, only a few months later. 

After his death she found herself going back, however, as she much preferred having not to be near him. So, she most frequently stayed away, most frequently stayed at home, especially for those stretched in which it was unoccupied, angry and bitter still but soothed by their distance. 

Yet before that night, before that girl, she had never before been seen by anyone else. She tried her best, suspected that maybe the odd child, the rare elderly woman, the occasional gloomy teen, had noticed her while walking through the cemetery. Had looked too pointedly at her grave, had looked in her direction a bit longer than a stranger should have. Had been a bit too conscious of her shifting of glasses in their kitchen, a bit too quick to move out when she tried to grab their attention. But while she felt they might have seen _something_ she was fairly sure they hadn’t seen her. At the very least none of them reacted like he had.

It was a lonely existence. The dead decidedly dead. The living as good as dead for company when they couldn’t see her. 

So when she saw her, that girl who had been sat in front of her grave for far too long, messy curly hair, skin deep and warm, she almost couldn’t believe it. Had been startled herself when it happened; when she had screamed and fell to the earth, collapsing back on her bottom before she scrambled up, running away with only a brief, startled look back.

She remained still for a long moment after, starting, confused and startled herself at the response.

_She had been seen_. 

When she realized it she couldn’t help but stand from where she had been sitting atop her grave, too tired as it had been that night, to wander but awake enough to need to be out and at least somewhat away from him. Now she was glad she had been too tired to wander. 

She had been seen. 

And all at once her veins filled with an emotion other than anger. 

That girl, the one who had sat in front of her grave for ages, the one who she had seen the face of just long enough to recognize as the new idiot who had moved into her house, had been able to see her. Had been able to hear her. 

She _must_ have something to do with him. After all, he was the only other one who had ever seen her before. 

She smiled for what very well could have been the first time since she had died. 

This was going to be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this chapter is so short! But after this we’re done with plot and character introductions and it’s time to get spooky >:)  
> That being said this next chapter will probably take me a little longer to get out because while I have started it I’m not through the rough draft just yet. I’ll get it out as quickly as I can so hopefully it won’t be any longer than two or three weeks at the absolute latest (I will try my best to get it up in one but two seems most likely). If you want to know more specifics you can follow my tumblr (@eightpoundsofhair) because I’ll announce a date when I know for sure there!  
> Anyways thanks for reading! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment! And have an incredible day!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Realized the other day that I accidentally made Peri’s initials in this P.P. :( (I gave her the last name of the guy whose gravestone inspired this story ITS NOT MY FAULT)

Okay, maybe Lapis was lying to herself. 

Lapis _did_ care. She cared so much and she hated herself for it. 

And while she hated herself for thinking about how true that was, had sworn herself off of the subject entirely before then, as she ran home in the dark of the night, terrified at whatever it was she just seen, horrified that it might be following her, it was the only thing strong enough to distract her.

So, as she ran, she forced it to the front of her mind to avoid everything else. Pulled it out deliberately and forcefully to block off the panic quickly rising in her chest. It worked better than she had anticipated; as she started to pull at it it came rushing out all at once.

Those unhappy little feelings began oozing out of her, fast and uncontrolled after having been so long ignored. It was overwhelming, quickly overpowering and intense and it ended up leaving her in near tears as she ran, panting for breath and growing achy and worried she may trip but scared enough to keep the pace. 

She hated that she cared about them, those two bitches who she had thought, genuinely believed, had been her best friends. Had been her only friends. She hated how much time she had spent trying to please them, giving them cutesy little gifts, altering her interests to match theirs, showing them the best her she could ever possibly be only to be met with gradually stronger distaste. She hated how even when she could see the friendship falling from their eyes she kept trying. She hated how she had been genuinely surprised, so terribly, truly upset, when they kicked her out.

She hated how jealous she was of that third idiot girl who fit so much better in the group she had tried so hard to mesh with. She hated how much she hated her for filling her place, even when deep down she had known from the beginning that she had never truly fit. 

She hated that she continually cared about school but could not bring herself to go. She hated how she would want to cry over her failing exam scores and her barely scraping by essays. She hated how she spent so much time looking at her assignments she was supposed to be doing, hated how much she planned only to never write anything down. She hated how much she did care about her teachers opinion of her, how much she desperately wanted them to like her, to leave pleasant little annotations of praise on the margins of her papers. She hated how she let herself give up when it got hard. She hated how she couldn’t even commit to that decision if she was gonna choose it. 

She hated that she had let herself run away. Hated that at the first sign of a bump in the road she had taken it at face value and stormed out of the apartment. Hated that she _knew_ that they hadn’t really kicked her out, not fully, merely suggesting she might let their new friend move in and she find someplace else soon. They would have let her stay if she had asked, even if they didn’t like her very much anymore. But she had blown up at them. Collecting what she could grab and biking as fast as she could until she reached the end of town, reached the end of the next town, and the next, until she finally found this town, only stopping at that shitty little ‘for sale’ sign. She hated how quickly she had decided that this would be better when she noticed how low the rent was. 

She hated how unfair it was. Hated how for all of _them_ it had been easy; easy to make friends, easy to fall in love with their majors, easy to go to frat parties and dress in tube tops and wear too much lip liner. She hated how easy it had been for them to do their assignments last minute, hated how easy a time they had cram studying. She hated how they all loved it here, loved college life and felt wholeheartedly like this was the best time of their lives. 

She hated them for having what she had always wanted. She had always thought college would be perfect; she would make so many friends and learn so much and come into her own skin. It wasn’t fair that they all _did_ feel that way, that they all had gotten what she had wanted so badly, and she had to force herself to trudge on. It wasn’t fair that they all got it so easily and she was trying so, so hard only for it all to fall flat. 

She hated how she had let herself give in. She hated how she had dealt with it all. She hated herself. 

And as she ran all the way home, in through the door, up the twisty staircase into the tiny bathroom tucked into the corner, refusing to think about it, refusing to let _her_ be real, refusing to let her leave the cemetery, it had been all she could find to block out the noise. The only thought so overcoming and harrowing that she could pretend she wasn’t terrified. 

But even when she had gotten home, had stripped for a bath, ready to wash away the fear and convince herself it was a delusion, to move on from this frantic observation, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Instead she found herself obsessed, circling through it all over and over; unable to even remember what had started her thinking about it. She could not stop sitting in it, unable to at all distract herself, unable to waver in her thinking on it. 

And staring at herself in the mirror, shaking and still panting in the near black darkness of the bathroom, she couldn’t help but feel more desolate than she could cope with.

She knew it would be gone tomorrow. Knew that tomorrow she could and would convince herself quite genuinely, again, that she didn’t care. That she hadn’t liked her friends to begin with. That she never liked school. That she had only kept going back out of boredom. That she wasn’t viciously jealous of them all.

But in the moment it was hard to break her stare. 

**

By the time she awoke the next day, she was positive that what had happened the night before was a delusion. A nightmare probably. Maybe an overtired hallucination if she was unlucky.

But she was sure that no matter the case it, what she had believed she had seen last night, was fake, a falsity. And even when she couldn’t stop thinking about it, kept seeing that image, kept seeing her, the half transparent woman sat atop the old headstone, her legs crossed and eyebrows raised in cool annoyance, dressed in old, gimmicky clothing, silvery and pale as the moonlight in front of her, she felt confident of that fact. 

Or at least that’s what she told herself. 

But it was easy to do so when, as she rose to her feet, feeling jittered awake even when her bones sunk heavily with tiredness, her mind kept wanting to roam. To her surely but somehow much more to what she had used to distract herself last night. 

She felt bad. For the first time in a long while she woke feeling horrible about it all. She was jealous, angry, more than a little upset. And it was hard to shake the feeling off, even when she was desperate to do so. It was terribly hard, harder especially when normally she would fall so quickly out of the state with sleep. 

“I am not upset,” she had told herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, trying to, in a reversal of the day before, distract her mind with the peculiar and frightening image of the woman last night, ponder its credibility, ponder her sanity. But it didn’t seem to work. Instead her chest continued to stay tight and her mind continued to circle around how upset she actually was about it all. 

“I am not upset,” she tried to remind herself as she poured a bowl of cereal, grimacing into the bowl when she realized that she really didn’t have an appetite after all.

“I am not upset,” she kept telling herself. Wishing that if she said it aloud enough she would trick herself into believing it. 

Yet no matter how many times she told it to herself, staring at herself in the mirror, in the reflection of her spoon; no matter how many times she spoke it into the air in front of her, she couldn’t shake the feeling. Hot and buzzing and nervous it lingered, took a tight hold on her body, loitering and refusing to budge.

And after a few hours she couldn’t ignore it anymore. She hadn’t quite recovered from last night. Hadn’t recovered from thinking it all over. Hadn’t recovered from seeing the ghost, even if she was sure it couldn’t have truly been there. Hadn’t recovered from any of last night. 

And jittery with the feeling, antsy to work it away, she quickly became restless. So, after rushing to haphazardly put on her shoes, she left the house and started walking in a rash attempt to distract herself. 

It was day when she left, a fact she hadn’t noticed when she woke, and with the dull warmth of the air, the sun high above her head, Lapis could only assume it was mid afternoon. It helped her calm a bit, the sun sat high in the sky allowing her to place her anxieties onto her lack of sleep. After having gotten home so late, probably only a couple of hours before the sun rose, her waking up when she did meant she couldn’t have slept more than a few hours.

She let herself think about that for a while, as she walked down the road aimlessly, watching her feet as she went, kicking at rocks and nervously twittering with her thumbs and trying hard not to _really_ think. To instead worry about anything else; places she should apply for a job, when she should go get groceries, how soon she should go back to sleep. And while it didn’t distract from the feeling fully, didn’t actually move her chest away from the tight hotness of before, it seemingly was good enough to bring her to move on autopilot. 

She only realized she was going to the cemetery when she was almost there. 

At first she wanted to turn, not wanting to test fate, not wanting to see if her anxious memory was real or not, but she couldn’t stop herself. The realization quickly shifted her thought process back to what she had seen; had all at once removed the weightier, more upsetting anxiety that she had created last night and instead shifted back to what she felt now it always should have. 

What the _hell_ had happened last night?

And once her thoughts had shifted back she had to know. Had to go look, go find out if she really had imagined it after all, even if the idea that maybe she hadn’t was terrifying. With a new excited, jittery ball of anxiety resting in her stomach, Lapis quickened her pace. 

The graveyard felt much different in the day. Lit pleasantly in the morning sun the beauty of the earth around and the weight of the dead held a tonal dissonance that Lapis would normally relic in. It was pretty, undeniably lovely as birds sang in the trees and squirrels ran about and the bouquets of fresh flowers showed off their flashy colors. Yet the rows of grave markers, the occasional person sat in front of one particular stone, made the beauty feel almost inappropriate.

Normally Lapis would have found it comforting. Would find herself soothed by the overused metaphors, the life coming from death, the beauty from the decayed, but on that day she couldn’t do much more than notice the feeling. Instead she felt tense, worried, as she entered further, like she should most certainly turn on her heels and run home before she found what she knew she was looking for but dreaded to see. It was a first for her; to feel so unsettled in the cemetery. 

Still, even when she thought she should go home, felt her hands shake slightly, her heart patter a little quicker with fluttering nerves, even when she _wanted_ to go home, she was so curious that she couldn’t stop herself. 

She didn’t believe what she had seen was real, knew with all reason that it must have been a vivid hallucination, or, more likely, a dream. She knew well that she was tired enough, worried enough, to have created such a fantastical and unsettling image for herself. Yet even when she could so easily write it off, feeling quite surely that nothing could have occurred the night before, her doing so sat uncomfortably.

She wasn’t sure. Felt herself doubt when she recalled how vivid it was; far more so than any other dream she could remember. And even if she knew, realistically, that it was false she couldn’t fully believe it. Not yet. 

She had to reassure herself. To fully convince herself that nothing had happened. She had to visit the cemetery. Just to be sure. She had to look over the stones in the area she remembered being in. Just to be sure.

Because only then, after having come back and not seeing it, after having come back and looking over all the graves, one by one even if it took hours, only to find nothing familiar, she could be positive. Only then would that stubborn little ‘what if’ which floated about her mind even against all reason finally be proven untrue. Then she could come back here without fear. Could laugh off that silly, childlike nightmare which had so genuinely scared her into the safe hours of day. Could move on from all this worry and try to reestablish herself. 

But she had to _know_.

So, even when her hands shook a bit, even when her heart pounded harder than normal and breathing felt a bit more difficult than it should, she kept on. Antsy to leave but determined to prove it to herself. 

She couldn’t remember exactly what the tombstone itself had looked like. As she picked her way through the grassy field off the path where she could have sworn she had been in her dream she became quickly aware of that fact. 

She wasn’t exactly surprised, in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t what she had been focused on at the time. But it was frustrating now, because even when she picked her way down the line, fairly sure that each grave she passed wasn’t the one she had been sat upon, she couldn’t be positive. 

She groaned after a while, a low, frustrated noise in her throat as she looked up the hill, still having such a long stretch to pick through, kicking at the dirt in anger. Yet as she looked up, for what was now the third time in ten minutes, her eyes found themselves settling in a different spot. 

And then she saw it.

It wasn’t remarkably different from the others. A similar silhouette, nearly the same as the others, not particularly pushed away from the others, in fact several others were sat neatly in line with it, but at the sight of it she knew. 

Her heart sank in her chest at the sight. This was not how this was supposed to go. 

But, alas, it did and instantly, all at once, she knew it couldn’t have been imagined. No. Because there it was, the grave she had sat upon, so obviously it, even when she wasn’t sure how she knew. 

Her hands shook a bit harder, fear pooling in her stomach and causing her body to tense, her breathing to stop altogether, her heart rate to spike dramatically. She wanted to run, felt so scared, terrified like she had last night, horrified at what this meant, but she couldn’t get herself to turn. Instead found herself pulled towards it.

Looking over her shoulder nervously, anxiously checking to make sure she was not lurking behind, waiting to pounce, she approached it, walking quick with nerves. When she reached it she had to crouch down to see the letters which were starting to fade away, muted by the mosses which grew atop the rock and soft with age. But still, she lowered herself and found the words sat clearly, if soft with age, in front of her. 

_ Peridot Platt _

_ Born August 23rd 1873 _

_ Died November 17th 1894 _

It was nothing actual. Nothing that could have actually connected the pieces but seeing it made her uneasy. Her chest squeezed a bit tighter, compressing and overpowering, her breathing came on a little quicker, and she felt paranoid little twinkles of energy run down her spine. 

She got to her feet a bit quicker than she otherwise would have, turned a bit more abruptly than she normally would have, and left the cemetery far sooner than she ever had before. 

She was happy to exit the graveyard. To free herself of that pressured air, distance herself from that tombstone. 

And as she left, glancing occasionally over her shoulder with nervous energy, she thought that she shouldn’t head back to the cemetery anymore.

**

Peridot Platt was angry and for good reason too. But for the first time in ages that anger felt something other than that, than the dull, mundane, normal anger that so easily filled her being by then.

Instead, for once, her anger felt productive. Because now, finally after years of anger about having not done anything when he was still alive, at having not tried harder to do something to him, at having given in so easily, she had a second shot. 

This girl, whoever she was, had to be connected to him. A great grandchild she was guessing. One that was the descendant of him and that pretty little neighbor, created just weeks after she had died, maybe even before then. Irregardless, she was sure of it, unwaveringly positive that she, this new tenant, was only able to see her so that Peridot could finally get revenge. This was what Peridot had been waiting for. This is why she was still here. 

This girl _would_ be the vessel for her revenge. She had to be.

That’s why she could see her. That’s why Peridot was still here. Peridot had never been so sure of anything before. 

It was a redo since she had failed so poorly with him himself. A second shot, another chance to get back at him so she could move on like everyone else had. 

A second shot that would not go to waste. Peridot would make sure of it. 

Besides, this time she had the upper hand. Because before she had been dazed, newly dead and not sure why she would still be aware. Unsure, truly, that she had died at all. And by the time she realized it, by the time she started to try to plan, it had been too late, he had died before she could figure out how to kill him herself. 

But not this time. This time she knew what was happening. Had had years and years of bitter reminiscing behind her to prepare her. To allow her to ponder and place her feelings, to fret over a lost opportunity, to fantasize in elaborate detail what she would have done had she been given another shot. 

Seemed the universe was more than willing to comply. 

It took her another night to act, however. Another evening which she spent gaining back her energy which she had foolishly drained the night before she had first seen her.

She had wanted to follow her then, wanted to scramble and chase after her in the moment, but she knew it wouldn’t work. She needed to calm herself, collect her thoughts and stick to her careful plan which she had been crafting since he had died. A casual and collected murder so she wouldn’t fail due to her frantic emotions like before. And besides, she was tired. Any attempt now would hardly be as satisfying if she was a little woozy throughout. So she had sat back down after a moment, disappointed but willing to wait for this. 

But eventually, the next night after having spent the day inside, resting as best she could when she was so excited, she stood from her grave and started. 

The walk was not long and she was glad. After so many years it had grown routine, easy. She was going home, she always went home, even if she didn’t like home very much. But this time it was different. 

There was no dragging of her feet, knowing exactly where she was headed but upset, angry, that _this_ was the best she had. There was no frustrated little bubble of anger in her stomach, hot and tight and scampering like bugs, because she had no place to go but back to where she had had to spend so much time with him. Back to where she had died.

Not this time. 

No. This time she floated down those few blocks, skillfully maneuvering down the alleyways to get there the quickest, her chest light, eased. Her limbs tingled with excitement, for the first time in as long as she could remember. She was elated. 

It was late evening when she arrived back home. The sun was just starting to dip below the horizon, the air fresh as the sky shifted from soft, muddy blues to pale oranges.

As she floated through the front door she moved slowly, trying her best to be quiet even when, by now, she had forgotten how one does sneak around quietly. But it seemed to not matter. As she made her way up the stairs, through the closed door she found her, lying still and decidedly asleep in the bed. 

Excitement flooded her body at the sight, left her skin tingling in hot joy, her chest expanding largely. This was perfect. She wouldn’t even have time to notice her. She wouldn’t have time to run before Peridot could attack. 

She went to her quickly, rushing to the side of the bed, overwhelmed with bitter excitement, with years upon miserable years of pent up anger. She jumped atop the bed without thought, her careful plan to subtly, carefully crawl atop her, or sneak behind her, or hide behind a lamp until she passed only to pounce, forgotten in her state; pent up, old, furious anger muddying her thoughts and leading her to move in furry.

She tried at once to kill her, uncoordinatedly fumbling over her body as she slept, anger drawing her on and distracting the part of her that remembered again how little she was following the plan. She tried at once to fling herself over her, straddling her chest and scrambling to get at her as fast as she could, desperate to be on top of her, as close to her as possible, so she could better kill her. She tried at once to wring at her neck, do what she had tried to do to him ages before, to hit her and tear at her and kill her until she was as dead as she. 

She was overwhelmed, furious, and it was hard to stop herself even when she became quickly aware that it wasn’t working. If anything it became harder to control herself, harder to not thrash around, dig her feet in, squeeze as hard as she possibly could. Because again, just like with him, nothing was happening other than the spreading of some slight pinkish irritation. 

She was furious, it wasn’t _fair_ , this was why she was still aware, this girl who could see her was why she could not just have died and been dead. She _needed_ revenge. She wanted to _kill_. But even when she gave her neck one last squeeze, as tight as she could possibly manage, nothing happened. The girl hardly even shifted her face in mild discomfort. 

And quickly the furry faded to upset. 

She got off of her quickly, embarrassed and frustrated and as she fumbled to the floor she felt her face falling. 

It was just like before, even when she had assured herself for years on end that if given another chance it would all go differently. But she had failed; her hands had phased through her, left nothing more than soft little red splotches on her skin, and even when that only made her angrier, made her eyes water as she had squeezed at her neck as hard as she could, with so much pressure her hands ached, nothing happened. She didn’t even wake. Hardly even reacted at all, nothing more than a disgruntled little huff and a scrunching of her face. 

And just like before she had gotten so caught up in her emotions that she had forgotten to remain calm. Had forgotten how to best go about this. And by now she had wasted her shot, was upset and embarrassed and could not kill when she felt so unsettled.

She wanted to leave, wanted to stomp away angrily, but she found, as her eyes focused again upon her, now resting peaceful, that she couldn’t. Found herself unable to stop staring as the girl slept, so calm while she herself was now exhausted and panting for breath and trying to hold back angry, upset tears. 

It wasn’t fair. 

For years she had had to stay awake while they all lie dead. For years she had had to remember all the times he screamed at her, all the times he taunted her and used their neighbor as nothing more than an added jab. For years she had had to relive her death over and over again, feel again his hands on her as he strangled her, his hands on her as he covered her mouth so she could not scream. For years she had had to lie next to him, angry beyond belief, upset beyond belief, that she had wasted her opportunity to get revenge. 

And again it had all fallen flat. Even if it was in part her fault, in part her doing for being so rash and impulsive, it still upset her. Left her insides twisting unpleasantly. 

She eventually rose, turning quickly to leave when the girl in bed started getting restless. She left quickly, trying to find a way to prepare herself for next time before she awoke and saw her.

She was upset but she would not give up. She _would_ kill her. 

She had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably gonna be a bit before the next chapter is up as I'm most likely gonna take a brief break to write a one shot but hopefully it won’t be too terribly long before I can post again!   
> Anyways thanks so much as always for reading! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment! And have a lovely day!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the scenes with some violent moments in them. They aren’t overly graphic but I wanted to give a fair warning to anyone who may be sensitive to such material. Additionally, while I do believe this would classify only as a minor depiction of violence please let me know if you believe I should alter any tags to better address the content. Thank you!!

Lapis woke up covered in red.

Her chest and torso was littered in pinkish patches of irritation. Heavy spots which covered what was nearly her entire body, leaving her nearly wholly pink when she caught sight of herself, naked for a shower, in her bathroom mirror.

One large splotch sat on her chest, spreading across the whole of it in an oblong, irregular shape. A few stray little dots, round and lopsided mostly, ran down the bottom of her stomach. Several more lay, swiping long and thin, in random places up and down her things, her shins, her stomach. Her neck was what scared her the most, though. 

All of it was a bright, deep red. All of it a solid, dark splotch. All of it fully covered in irritation. Some of it was so dark it looked bruised, a dark purplish red. And those darkest bits, so profusely stained they appeared almost black staring back at her in the mirror, sat right around the midsection of her neck; a mess of deep purple impressions. In a very definitive shape, one Lapis wished it didn’t resemble. The shape of hands.

Sharp and clear outlines, obviously hands, sat boldly in black inky patches, wrapping completely around the front of her neck. It looked almost as if she had been strangled. 

She found herself staring, found herself transfixed, looking unwaveringly at herself in the poorly lit bathroom. She couldn’t break her gaze, wouldn’t dare distract herself while she was looking like that. Yet the longer she looked the heavier the fear pooled in her veins; realer than she had ever felt the feeling before. Her heart felt simultaneously as if it had stopped altogether and as if it were beating continuously, with no pauses between each pulse. Her hands felt cold, clammy, and weighted down heavy. Breathing felt near impossible, only growing harder when she became acutely aware that she couldn’t breath when her neck looked like _that_. 

What the fuck had happened to her?  She couldn’t understand it. Even when deep down she felt she knew. 

She planned to run. Planned to leave at once, hide somewhere. Leave this terrible fucking town and go crawling back to her roommates. Hysterically beg to come back, to live in the apartment even if she just stayed in the living room. Go back to school and throw herself in. Forget this and never, ever visit a cemetery again. 

But she couldn’t move. Felt terribly weighted down, paralyzed, as she stared at herself. 

**

Peridot Platt was angry and for good reason too. It hadn’t worked.

But then, when she thought about it, of course it wouldn’t.

Why would it? It hadn’t with him and while she was sure that this new girl was promising, was an apology from fate for her failing of before, it wouldn’t make sense for things to change. Why would she be easily able to harm her, kill her, touch her, do whatever she desired, when she hadn’t been able to do so with him? Afterall, he had killed her and she couldn’t touch _him_. And while this girl, this vapid, loathsome idiot who she felt she deserved to harm, with utmost certainty had something to do with the situation, with him, she wasn’t him. 

Peridot was an idiot.

She had stomped back to the cemetery that evening, anger boiling brightly in her bones, hotter and far more intense than it had in a long while. Of course it wouldn’t work. Why would it?

But still, it wasn’t fair.

Why not? Why couldn’t she get this one small victory? Why couldn’t she just get this one thing after her life had been so terrible, her death so isolating and frustrating? It was exhausting, it was terribly angering. It was the least she deserved after she had waited so long for another shot. After she had waited for endless isolated years for revenge. Terribly alone and terribly regretful and only growing angrier because of it. 

As she walked down the path, thinking it over with her brows pulled down, hands balled in fists, the upset at having failed, the embarrassment of having acted so rashly began to fade away entirely. Instead she found herself starting to stomp, felt her brows grow taut, her fingernails digging into her palms as her anger grew. 

Of course it wouldn’t work. Why should it have? But what then? Why did she have to endure this if not for some satisfaction? Why couldn’t it just work? Why?

And as she made her way finally into the cemetery she found herself growing blindly angry.

She stomped her feet as she went, practically jumping up and down as she walked up the path to her grave, wanting to kick and scream and tear her hair out in bitter anger. She wanted them to hear her as she went down the way, him and anyone else below who might somehow hear her, anyone else who might be as unlucky as her to still be thinking. She wanted to rip the earth to shreds, wanted to destroy the path and tear up the dirt and crush all of the tombstones to pebbles beneath her. She wanted to kill, wanted so desperately to kill that girl that she couldn’t handle it. 

It wasn’t _fair_. 

She couldn’t stop thinking it and it was making her angrier. She should get this. This was what this was for, wasn’t it? Why was she still conscious, still halfway alive, if not to get this satisfaction? This was why she had to suffer so long, lonely and angry and waiting for anything at all. She should get this. She deserved it. 

It wasn’t fair!

And in a hot fit of anger after having returned to her grave, after seeing his stupid gravestone sat so simply next to her’s, their stupid, idiot, gorgeous neighbor on his other side, she decided that she couldn’t possibly go back inside. Knew that she couldn’t just slip into sleep, couldn’t just give in and lie docile next to her murderer. She was fuming with hot, burning, violent anger; bustling to the brim with the sensation. She couldn’t take it. 

Panting heavy and burning she glared at her grave, his down the line, and found her anger bubbling over, growing hotter, stinging harder.

She tried to destroy his grave in retaliation. Tried with everything in her person to kick it and hit it and destroy it somehow. And while she made some progress, could feel it, physically touch it in a sense, it didn’t do much. Only ended up hurting her hands, her feet. 

And after a moment, after doing no more than hurting herself and disrupting the plants beneath her, she took a frantic step back, anger boiling hotter in her veins then she could ever begin to express. Squeezing and compressing and leaving her unable to control herself. 

It wasn’t fair! 

Why was she still here? Why must she suffer? Why must she be forced to think, to lie besides him, to stay alone and acutely conscious when she could do nothing to make herself feel better? Why could she feel so strongly if she could do nothing about it?

She got to her feet and jumped up and down on the ground, shouting; wanting desperately to physically express her anger when she could not any other way. Wanting desperately, more than anything she had ever wanted before, than to kick and destroy and maim. So, so angry that nothing was working. So, so frustrated that it wasn’t that she only wanted to hurt more. 

And as hideously angry as she was, her chest compressed suffocatingly tight, her stomach licked with hot fiery anger so intense she felt she could explode, she couldn’t just stand there. She couldn’t stay here at all. Couldn’t stand having to look at his grave, hers, any longer. Wouldn’t dare lie next to his body. 

She wouldn’t. Never again. 

She _would_ get what she wanted. 

She turned on her heels, stomping her way down the path even when she felt the need to move quickly. She was too furious to stop even that small attempt at destruction. 

** 

Lapis was still stood, terrified and frozen in the mirror when she entered the house. She could hear her as she came in. Heard her cursing and shouting and stomping her way through the front door at once. It would have been almost comical had Lapis not been terrified.

But her heart sank at the sound. At the stomping of feet and the cursing down below her, inside the house, her body weight centralized in her stomach. Her hands grew tense. Her body hot. And as the sound continued inward, drew closer, moving up the stairs, the panic grew hotter. 

It clicked all at once, or at least she could not longer pretend not to know. She knew what had happened to her. This ghost had. She was why Lapis looked like she had been strangled. And now she was coming up the stairs, shouting and cursing and coming to try again. 

Lapis was about to die. 

Quickly she rushed to dress, pulling on her shirt frantically in panic, wanting to run out of the bathroom, out of the house, but feeling too exposed to do so like this. Perhaps it was a bad call, as when she had finally finished and swung open the door to bolt there she was. 

The same ghost from before. The same ghost from the other night, the one with the fancy hair and dress, but this time she was _here_. In Lapis’s house, in the doorway of Lapis’s bathroom, with the most angry, flustered, crazy expression she had ever seen on someone sitting atop her face. 

Lapis hardly had time to do more than see her, recognize her and feel her heart sink into her feet, before she was atop her. 

Lapis fell with her, her limbs shaking, her heart pounding, her body stiff and hot and filled with panic, and it took her a second, a long second where she was blind with panic but fully aware that that was a terrible thing, to notice what was happening. 

The ghost was sat atop her, hands around her neck and screaming in her face, and Lapis thought that surely she would die. But after another moment of panic induced blindness she realized that she couldn’t feel it. Not at all. 

Even when her hands were pressed tight against her neck, along those same dark splotches, even where she sat atop her, her thighs splayed out across her’s, she couldn’t feel her touch at all. All she could feel was some light stinging pressure, a sparky, electrical feeling. Unpleasant and there but soft and mild and almost unrecognizable. 

She didn’t let herself process it more than that, though, felt a surge of confidence at the lack of sensation and she rushed to move, and in a quick moment she pushed the ghost off of her, rolled her over and off as she herself got to her feet to run down the stairs. 

She didn’t wait to see what the ghost did, wasn’t even sure if she had managed to really push her off or if she had just gotten up through her. Instead she simply started and ran, moving so fast she was surprised she didn’t trip. In what felt like only a second she was already down the stairs and rushing into the house. 

Still, Lapis couldn’t stop herself. She turned to look as she reached the base of the stairs, heart pounding in her ears. She hated how her panic drew her to do it even when she knew it was a waste of time, she would only scare herself, but she couldn’t help it. She had to know, _needed_ to see how close she was, wished desperately that she would turn only to find her gone forever. 

She was not so lucky. The ghost was not far behind. Was already most of the way down the stairs. The sight surged another wave of intense panic down Lapis’s spine. She was so close and Lapis, terrified at having seen her quickly approaching, was again frozen in place. 

She had to force herself to move, use tremendous effort to get her legs to start again, to turn her head and sprint, and when Lapis finally moved to run she realized too late that she was cornering herself by running further into the building rather than rushing out the front door, which had been just paces too her left. 

She tried not to dwell on it when the ghost landed on the first floor behind her, even when it left her whimpering as she ran, terrified and desolate at her misstep. Instead she tried to focus on her feet, on moving quickly, trying to find a plan. Desperate to calm herself, to redirect her panic into action, to will herself out of this scenario altogether. 

In the end it only distracted her for just long enough for the ghost to catch up; jump on top of her again. 

Lapis fell once again, the slight, misty pressure of her touch on her startling her into toppling over more than the weight of the touch itself. But still, quickly the woman settled on top of her back, rushing to grab at her neck again with her halfway there, fizzy touch. Lapis felt herself grow woozy, fear sitting so heavily in her stomach that when she tried to push herself up she couldn’t. It didn’t help that her shaky attempt to move only made the ghost laugh atop of her, move her hands from her neck to rest on her shoulders as she started to shout. 

“Trying to run away?” She laughed, her voice high and snarling and terrifying, “I will _not_ let you escape from me again”

Lapis wanted to throw up. Felt quite genuinely that she might. Or maybe pass out. But while the ghost’s hands were at least off of her neck, removing that stinging sensation from her sore, bruised skin, she jumped to move. Pulling herself to her feet with as much energy as she could. Rushing into the kitchen while the ghost screamed in frustration behind her. 

Exhausted and shaking Lapis ran to the cabinets without much thought, collapsing into a heap in the corner and starting to cry as she could hear the ghost enter. She was screaming incoherently, shouting obscenities, names Lapis didn’t recognize, terrible threats, as she approached. 

Lapis willed herself to move. Knew she needed to run, needed to get out of here, but she was petrified. Terrified and exhausted and sobbing and her useless clutching to the cabinets was only making her feel all the worse. 

And as she heard the ghost reach her all she could think to do was hastily pull open a drawer, grab one of the two knives she owned, and turn on her. She wasn’t sure if it would do anything, felt it likely wouldn’t, but it was all she could think to do. 

And as she turned on her, gasping and crying and clutching the knife as tightly as she could in her hands, she expected nothing to happen. She expected an angrier reprise into an attack. Her genuine death. But to her surprise the ghost stalled in her tracks. Her face falling into a sudden look of shock. Her wicked, psychotic exterior falling away to leave her looking scared, vulnerable. 

For a moment she simply stood while Lapis watched, shaking and holding onto the knife with everything in her, but after what felt like hours she finally turned on her heels and left. Departing the kitchen and eventually, Lapis could hear from her footsteps, through the front door. 

Lapis was so relieved she fell to the floor, leaning into the cabinets and clutching her knife, to cry. 

**

Peridot Platt was angry and for good reason too. 

But even when she was terribly frustrated at having failed again, a whopping total of three miserable attempts now, she felt a shiver of excitement run down her spine as she walked back to the cemetery. She had an idea.

The girl had startled her genuinely; shocked her to her core and left her flooded with hot panic when she pulled the knife on her. Made her forget for a moment that she had died over a hundred years ago and couldn’t really get hurt by it, at least she could assume not. Irregardless it had startled her enough to cause her to bolt, to flee in fear, and while she was angry of how uselessly afraid it had made her when she first realized how foolish it was, angry that it had caused her to stop, to run away, to give up, it gave her an idea. One that just might work. 

She couldn’t touch _her_ but she _could_ touch objects. 

A tombstone of her husband. A mug in the kitchen counter. A door hinge.  She could and had touched those things before. Could and had moved other physical objects before. Could and would pull the same stunt she had pulled on her. 

And while Peridot was disappointed to know that she would need to rest to act on her plan she decided as she fell into the earth that she didn’t actually mind. It would be worth it in the end. Would be worth it so wonderfully soon. 

So she tucked herself in, falling easily into the dirt, into her long decayed body, not without a good shout of ‘I hate you! Wish I could kill you a million times over and stomp on your body!’ to her husband’s corpse as she went. But with that last bitter thought she let herself doze away happily, letting herself be dead for now.

She stayed sedentary for a long while. Forcing her mind dosiale each time she began to stir, antsy and excited to wake, knowing well that her proper rest would be worth it. She let herself doze, drift, die for as long as she could bear, longer than she ever had before, and when she finally let herself wake she was so energized she felt almost alive once more. 

She found herself smiling devilishly as she slipped up from the ground. This time it would work. She was sure of it. 

**

Lapis was terribly anxious. 

It had been over a day by then. A day since the ghost had come in, attacked her so plainly. And while a long number of hours had passed, flying by yet simultaneously creeping in excruciatingly long stretches, she felt just as scared as she had when she had left. 

She was being attacked by a ghost. 

She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t comprehend how this was happening, why. She didn’t know what to do. How to protect herself. How to cope and instead she sat uselessly on the floor. Shaking and petrified and exhausted but trying desperately to stay awake. 

It had taken her ages to move from her heap on the kitchen floor. Sat on the cold tile in the corner of the counters, clutching her knife tightly in her hands and trying terribly to ground herself, she was so terrified, shaking, heart pounding heavily, that she had refused to move. Worried that if she left the safety of the corner, if she exposed her back to an open part of the room, she would be caught quickly again in an attack. 

She had fallen asleep like that at some point, despite her best efforts, after what felt like years of watching as the moonlight shifted across the tile of the room. All while holding her knife tightly in terrified anticipation of what might be coming back to get her, pushing her back against the wood behind her as hard as she could, terrified of letting something catch her from behind. Yet eventually she must have drifted as Lapis eventually startled herself awake, jumping and hitting her head against the counters but too frantic to care. It was day when she came to. 

And while she had to get up at some point, a tremendous and terrible task, had to remove herself from her corner where she woke so she could at all take care of herself, the feeling never really left. 

Because as much as she would have been scared irregardless following such a blatant attempt at her life this was a _ghost_. 

She felt like she was going crazy. 

As much as she was equally as terrified as she had been then now that she was gone, now that Lapis had slept, had been removed from the moment, she couldn’t help but worry that she was experiencing a frantic delusion. What else could it be? She must be going crazy. Out of her mind. It was the only way. 

Because even when Lapis knew, knew without a shred of a doubt, that what she had seen was real, that this was really happening, she couldn’t believe it. 

She didn’t believe in ghosts. Just like she didn’t believe in fairies or Bigfoot or any of those other make believe magical beings. Ghosts didn’t exist. At least not physical ones like this, ones that confronted you and touched you and left your neck a mess of bruises. Lapis was an adult, if overly poetic and inspired by the occult, and maybe a bit more than interested in death, but she knew realistically that it was all pretend.

But she had _seen_ it. 

It made her feel stupid when she remained so panicked, adrenaline flooding her veins still, drawing her exhausted and shaking once more. Made her feel childish, absurd when she held the knife to her chest like a clutch through the day. Peeking over her shoulders and breathing heavy, whining when she walked into dark rooms, fearful of a ghost of all things. 

She wished she had never come. Wished she had kept her head and stayed in her apartment. Told her roommates that they were being bitches and made a plan to make it better. Wished she had at the very least only moved across town, to the other side of campus. Wished she had taken the upheaval as a sign to rework her life for the better, find better friends, develop a sense of work ethic. Wished she had never decided she liked the cemetery in the first place, all those years ago. Wished she didn’t already miss the idea of visiting them. 

She wished desperately that she could change fate and it stung as she sank onto the old, tragedy of a couch that had been placed haphazardly in the living room when she had moved in. She frowned, taking a long deep breath in an attempt to soothe her nerves, clutching at her knife in her fists and trying to stop herself from falling asleep.

It was a short lived attempt. 

**

Lapis woke to a loud crash of noise.

As it startled her awake she couldn’t isolate where it had come from, wasn’t entirely sure it was happening in real life rather than a dream, but heated worry pooled in her veins irregardless. 

She tried to shake off the fear as she woke, looking with some mild panic for her knife which she knew must be buried somewhere in the couch when the noise didn’t continue. But still, even when she took slow breaths to calm herself, her heart hammered on in her chest, pounded against her rib cage steady and lurching, and she felt herself sweating. Her weight seemed to centralize in her stomach, festering and twirling and rotten, in her throat, heavy and hot and uncomfortable. 

Still, she tried her best to collect herself. Slow her breathing as best she could, stabilize herself in the room. Level her head and reason with herself as she carefully untangled blankets, moved cushions, looking as calmly as she could, still, for her knife. Probably it was nothing she reasoned to herself while she forced herself to move slow, not play into her fear. A sound existing only in a dream which had startled her awake. It was nothing; she was just alert, still scared from before and the fear was carrying over when it didn’t need to. It would be okay. She was fine. 

But then she heard it again.

A rustle of what sounded like metal in her kitchen, a harsh, abrasive sound. Crashing and loud and very real. 

Lapis stood instantly despite herself. 

She knew she should wait, stand and calm herself before she did anything rash. Knew that she should let what she _knew_ must be the ghost again rustle through her drawers while she left. While she found her knife, found something to protect herself. 

But she couldn’t stop herself. As much as she was terrified, shaking and short of breath and unwilling to accept it, she couldn’t stop herself from dropping the couch cushion and taking a tentative first step to the kitchen. She was terrified; knew how terribly foolish she was being, but she was enamored by the idea in a strange way. The same unwavering curiosity which drew her to her grave in the cemetery before possessing her now, encompassing her and pushing back those more rational thoughts. Kept her entire mind so narrow focused on her and her alone. It seemed inevitable that it would happen; hypnotized by fear and curiosity alike she wandered into the kitchen. 

She entered slowly, nervous and scanning the room but steadying herself as best she could by matching her breathing to the slow and rhythmic pace of her feet. Letting her self deprecating sense of profound interest move her, cool her panic. And at first all she felt was a disappointed sense of relief pooling in her veins; she wasn’t here. 

The drawers were closed. The room empty. And Lapis found herself breathing a heavy sigh, a soft smile creeping onto her face. She had let herself relax too soon, though.

As she breathed out she heard a shout, high and angry, from behind her and her heart rate spiked back up in an instant, body tending. 

She turned on her heels as quickly as she could, after a beat of a moment where panic left her frozen and stiff in her spot. Useless like a squirrel about to be hit by a car, a deer cornered by a mountain lion. The sight that greeted her when she turned only reaffirmed that paralyzing fear; in that moment she was prey. 

There she was, the ghost, Lapis’s ghost, charging at her with a wild, angry look on her face. A knife held tight in her grasp. 

A real, tangible knife. Lapis recognized it as the matching one to hers which lay somewhere still undiscovered in the couch. It scared her more than anything that had yet happened with the ghost. More than her first seeing her, more than the red splotches, more than the attempted strangling. Because while that had been more than terrifying this she knew in an instant was much more dangerous. Because, apparently, this ghost could hold objects. Can and was holding a knife. Her kitchen knife; had it propped up in her hand as she charged, ready to plunge it into her chest. 

Lapis felt she might genuinely be killed this time. 

The ghost fell atop her in a quick moment, bumping forcibly into her before Lapis could even start to move, stood instead paralyzed and useless in her anxiety. She laughed as she crashed into Lapis, knife held high above her head.

Lapis whimpered as she hit her, as she hit the ground a moment after, but the force of her falling was what finally woke her up from her terrified, paralyzed state. 

She tried to force her way out from under her as quickly as she could, shoving her in the chest before she could swing the knife down. It did nothing, her hand going through her with no more of a physical sensation than a stinging like that of a frozen limb, but it seemed to distract her. In any case she faltered to laugh, holding the knife between two interlocked hands loosely as she tossed her head back. 

Lapis took the spare moment to slide out from under her. She jumped to her feet as the knife came crashing down at her, missing her asides from sending a short scratch, thin and slight like a paper cut, down the bottom of her calf. 

It was hardly there, she wasn’t even bleeding, but the stinging sensation that met her skin as she hopped to her feet was enough for Lapis’s head to spin. She found herself running before she could process, crossing the kitchen and frantically tossing open the drawer. She wanted a knife of her own, wished she could simply hold it to scare her off like she had last time, to maybe, somehow protect herself, but when she tossed it open it was empty. Only a spare two forks and a misshapen spoon starting back at her. It was a bad time to forget that her only other knife was still somewhere hiding in the couch cushions. 

She felt her vision blurring, head grow woozy, when the ghost behind her started laughing again. Malicious and high and terrifyingly genuine. Like that of a murder in some campy slasher flic, like a bad dream where she was hunted by some terrible demon. Psychotic and wicked and all too happy to see Lapis terrified and failing and growing increasingly faint. 

Lapis turned around to look at her at the sound, whimpering and ready to cry and hoping that somehow her desolate state would sway her. The ghost simply smiled back at her, though; eyes wide open, her smile heavy and real and psychotic, her eyebrows lying high on her features. The emotional height of her face sent another shiver of desolation down Lapis’s body. It was somehow worse than the simple sound of her laughter. 

Yet it grew all the worse. In a fit of heavy laughter, as she tossed her head back, her neck jerked violently to the side. She grew impossibly bright, glowing such a hot shade of silvery white that Lapis instinctively squinted her eyes, and for a moment her whole being seemed to warp. Her body became terribly misshapen, her features stretched and scrambled and splayed across her face as if randomly placed atop it. She howled loudly in what sounded like pain, the sound more human than any other she had made all night, her features warping in displeasure. Yet before Lapis could do more than gasp she returned back to normal, her features snapping back into place, the glow dissipating, in the blink of an eye. 

She seemed to have not noticed, or at least unwilling to acknowledge it, as after only a short, split second, where her face fell, so fast Lapis wasn’t sure if she had at all imagined it, she was back to laughing. 

“Trying to find one too?” She mocked, her gody, psychotic laugh carrying over into her speech as she gestured with her head to Lapis’s empty hands, the open kitchen drawer, “Shame. I took the last one,”

At that she came running at her again and Lapis found herself running too before she had even properly realized she was being chased. She rushed into the living room, heart pounding in her ears, terror pooling in her stomach. She wanted to cry but she needed to leave first. Exit the house and forget about the lease. Forgot about her pride. Forget about everything and return back to school. Back home. Wherever. 

But in her haste to reach the door, her blind panic, she tripped and fell, her leg caught on the corner end of the coffee table. She hit the ground quickly, panic flooding hotly within her as she fell, and as she went her awkward position made so that her chin slammed down onto the corner of the couch. It stung and she ended up biting her lip hard enough that she instantly could taste the unpleasant iron of blood but as she hit it she noticed the shiny silver of her knife nestled between two cushions.

Her bleeding lip, the fact that she had fallen at all, was forgotten and she got to her feet, grabbing the knife quickly in her hands and spinning around to face her. 

As Lapis turned she was only just entering the room. At first she looked disheveled, her face warped in a begrudged, sickly look. Her brows pulled down in an uncertain, pained look. Her lips pursed into an uncertain frown. Her walking limp and short. But above all that her silver skin was whiter, glowing bright and hot like it had just moments before, her body all the more shiny.

Lapis took a step back at that, holding the knife steadfast in front of her, heart threatening to beat out of her chest, but hoping that pained look, her glowing skin, the warping of her features moments earlier, might be a good sign. Maybe she would give up. Maybe something was stopping her.

Unfortunately at her step the ghost’s eyes focused sharply onto her from where they had sat fuzzy and muted an instant before. And when her eyes trailed down from Lapis’s face to her hands her expression grew angrier, her sickly, pale face, her brightly glowing skin falling dim; warping into hot, evil malaise as she caught sight Lapis’s knife. 

Lapis felt herself tremor, trying to take a stark step back only to crash into the couch. She kept her ground, stayed on her feet even when the force of it stung her calves, but it was enough for the ghost to come charging. 

Lapis’s heart sunk into her stomach, her hands clammy when, as like before, she felt frozen, paralyzed by the intensity of her fear. 

She wanted to cry, wanted to disappear, tried to prepare to die.

Instead she could only stare. 

Yet, miraculously, before the ghost could reach her, as she got close enough for Lapis to see all the lines and sparkles of her face up close, the ghost’s entire existence seemed to stop. Disparate into thin air. 

And even when she was back not even a half a second later, her expression less concentrated, vaguely aloof, notably tired, Lapis felt relief flood her. 

The knife clattered to the floor. 

Not waiting to see what would happen Lapis reached for it, bending over and taking it from the floor as fast as she could while the ghost’s body began to flick in and out of existence. 

When she had it she turned and ran, jumping over the corner of the coffee table, rushing away from the couch, and out of the front door. 

She didn’t look back until she was well onto the highway where she dropped to her knees on the road, panting and exhausted with a knife in either hand but feeling decidedly safe.

When she turned to look the ghost was not behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My outline for this chapter consisted almost solely of “what do you have? A KNIFE! NO!!”  
> Anyways! This is my first time writing such an intense and direct fight scene and while it was hard I think I did okay.   
> But that’s besides the point- thanks so much as always for reading! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment! And have a lovely day!


	5. Chapter 5

Lapis didn’t know what to do. Not at first. 

She wanted to run. Felt that she most certainly _should_ run. Move again. Go somewhere, anywhere, else. A new town with no spooky old Victorian houses just blocks from the graveyard. A new town with no cemetery at all, preferably.

But she had signed a lease less than a week ago. Had packed up and moved only days before. Had run already, too recently for her to feel ready to do so again. Besides, where would she go? Even if she could leave, even had she not recently signed a thousand legally binding papers she hadn’t read, even if doing so wouldn’t make her feel worse about herself than she already did, she had nowhere she could go to. She couldn’t go back. Not back to school where she might bump into a half friend, an old roommate, who knew who she was and that she had run in the first place. She couldn’t go back home, back to her parents. She hadn’t spoken to them in long enough now to know that she wouldn’t be welcome home even if she somehow strayed back. She couldn’t go to some new town either. Couldn’t wander again only to find someplace else where some new problem would inevitably chase her down. New friends to not like and new deadlines to endlessly put off and, apparently, new literal ghosts to join her figurative ones. 

So she had to stay. 

Even though it felt like a worse case scenario, in the context of what was happening likely was, it brought her some comfort to at least know she had no choice. It stripped her of that primal desire, the intense want to act by leaving. It felt good to know, in an odd way, that a decision had been made for her. She would stay. She had to.

Even so, she spent the next few days constantly with a knife in hand. Keeping it on her always, holding it in front of her as she entered rooms, sleeping next to it when she did manage to pass out, clutching it to her side when she flipped through her phone. Her worry, the sinking dread which stayed heavy in her chest, anticipating another attack, drawing her to clutch it tight in her fists for all her waking hours. 

Yet after three days had passed even that clutch grew less comforting. It had been more than long enough for her to reflect, had been 72 hours of near constant reflection, and the more time which passed the less safe she felt.

She grew sure that a knife wouldn’t stop an attack, was sure she would freeze up before she could do any damage, that even if she didn’t the knife would do her, already dead and ghostly, no harm. And the more time that passed the more Lapis became sure the ghost was stalling to conjure up a better plot, a more efficient murder. 

So, in a frantic attempt to feel safe again, she fell back into an old hobby. 

Being one entranced by the moon, encapsulated by the cemetery, it was perhaps not surprising that Lapis had dabbled in her fair share of witchcraft. Of course she was not very good at it, never had made any observable changes in her life through the interest. And she, even in those phases when she was actively engaging in it, was never sure if she believed that partaking in it could achieve the things she read they would. But with the appearance of _her_ , with a real life ghost haunting her, attempting to kill her, she had grown to believe that maybe witchcraft wasn’t so far fetched. 

Besides, she hadn’t slept well in days. Hadn’t eaten almost anything in nearly as long. Maybe that’s what caused her rashness, her trust in the supernatural. Although Lapis didn’t note that in the moment; felt nothing but confidence seeping through her bones as she began flipping through her phone, looking for the right spell.

Once she started looking, scrolling desperately through websites and blogs which she hadn’t been onto in years, she found herself enthralled. Most of it was unhelpful, the paranoid ramblings of ‘psychics’, the poetic musings of purely aesthetic-born witches, but some of it was useful. Or at least Lapis hoped so. 

Those more respectable ones, the ones Lapis found to be written in level headed words, calm and positive yet undemanding in their approach, Lapis bookmarked. She found her old favorite blogs, read through ‘scientifically based’ papers on the phenomenon of ghosts, and wrote herself notes, muttered incantations, anything she could.

And maybe she shouldn’t have purchased a bushel of sage when she had yet to find a new job, had rent due in only a few weeks, but she felt comforted to know it was coming, soon if the additional price she had paid for shipping was anything to judge by. Maybe then she would feel safe again.

In the meantime she did what she could, making makeshift moon water, looking for her old crystals which she knew must be somewhere in a still unpacked box, reciting the incantations she found which seemed fitting. And maybe it was nothing, maybe it was childish and silly and absurd, but when Lapis finished she felt better. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could get this ghost of her trail for good. 

She let her knife fall from her hand finally, set aside so she could scroll through more websites. 

**

Forget angry; Peridot Platt was desolate. 

No longer could her pent up anger grow and burn, only strengthened by her increasingly illadvised failings. No longer was she ready to combust, explode, rip apart at the seams with hot, bubbling rage. The intense, frustrated, boiling emotion which had only been growing and festering in her for longer than she could bear with was no longer all controlling. No longer filled her and fueled her. No longer overcame her until she was consumed with bloodlust. No longer was she intensely desperate to kill, inspired by mistreatment and hot, raging anger. No longer was she even fiercely committed to revenge. 

Instead she sat simply at the foot of her grave, feeling worse than she expected she ever had before. 

It felt almost wrong at first. The emotion which she felt, which encompassed her whole self, wasn’t anger. It felt nothing like the anger she had felt at having been married off by her father to some terrible, unhandsome, wicked man. It wasn’t like the anger she had used to cover up her sadness of leaving home. Her intense desolation of having left her without so much as a goodbye. 

How poorly, how intensely depressed, she had felt then had been more debilitating than she had been able to cope with. She had had no out, nothing to do to cope with the situation and no one she could talk to. So she had covered it up with anger. Covered it up with attempts at being ‘right’ and normal. Covered it up by ditzing about at his heel, giving him falsified compliments, making her best attempts at cooking, anything she could to try and play her role. And when that didn’t work the beginning bubblings of the emotions which would control her for a century to come really took root.

How much worse she had felt when he started, almost instantly, to mistreat her had been easier to bury. Because she was angry at him. Angry at him for being terrible. Angry at her father for doing this to her. Angry at the town for disliking her, blaming her, for her own mistreatment. Angry at the world for making her this way and then punishing her for it. 

But this, now, was so much worse. Intensely, terribly worse because for the first time in over a century she could no longer bury her sadness behind rage. She was far too exhausted for that. 

Although that didn’t quite do it justice. She was beyond tired, so exhausted that she felt her body phasing in and out of reality, flickering like a light. But she didn’t want to go back inside. She didn’t want to rest. 

She hoped that maybe if she over exhausted herself enough she might die for real. Phase away and become like the other empty corpses within the cemetery. Besides, even when her body felt worse than she had ever felt before, in life or death, twitching and glitching rapidly, she was much too conscious to sleep, the lapse of anger allowing something worse to spill over. 

Why was she doing this? 

It was feeble. Hopeless. And it had been for the beginning. She had always known it, even if she buried it in rage, hid it beneath years upon years of misfortunes. But all the same, she had known it would never work from the start. And even if she hadn’t, even if she had genuinely believed outside of her frantic, delusional hope, that she could have hurt this girl why should she?

Peridot would not deny that she felt resentment towards her, bitter, twisted anger which had forced itself onto her from the moment she had first seen her. Nor would she deny that she felt confident that she was his great-great granddaughter. But even then, even when she still felt sure of that fact, was confident that that’s why she had seen her, that’s why Peridot was still awake, why? She might be related to him but she had nothing to do with it. She was just some kid. Stupid and foolish and terrible but when it came down to it she had nothing to do with it. 

She wasn’t the one who had killed her. That man had been dead for almost as long as she. This girl didn’t even know Peridot. Had been born a century after she had died. 

Peridot folded in further on herself, chest sinking further into her chest, eyes stinging, as she looked out onto the darkness of the cemetery in front of her. She felt a little surge of anger rise in her chest.

She wished she had died normally. Wished she had ended with her pulse, had never woken up after her death, dazed and confused but decidedly conscious. She wished the world could have granted her that one pleasantry and let her be done with all the feelings, all of the past of her life in death. She wished this woman had never entered the cemetery. Had never sat in front of her grave, had never moved into her home, had never been able to see her. She wished she hadn’t tried to hurt her. She wished she had never been born in the first place. 

She got up to kick at a rock in front of her but found herself sighing heavily as it skittered away, the moment of anger gone again. Exhaustion, the overwhelming physical sense as well as the more painful emotional kind, overcame her again. 

**

By the time Lapis’s sage had arrived the appeal of incantations had faded as much as her paranoia.

It had been almost a week and by then the pink of her skin, the red on her neck, the cut on her leg, had all healed. And while, as she watched them fade, watched as the red turned to purple to yellow to nothing, as her cut faded to a thin scab, that scab to nothing too, she was still tense, with the fading appearance of the physical damage Lapis’s fear too began to subside. And while part of her still couldn’t help but worry that the ghost’s lack of appearance was sign of a bigger plot, hint of some plan for her quick and precise death, with each passing day Lapis’s fear grew dimmer. Because as much as she worried, nothing had happened. Nothing at all. And gradually, despite herself, she grew more and more sure that the ghost had just given up. More and more sure that the flicking and warping of her person when she had last attacked was sign enough that she had died, dissipated, something. And gradually Lapis began to feel safe, at least for the most part. 

Still, as she fiddled and played with the herbs on the couch after having opened the package, she couldn’t help herself. 

She lit the sage and began walking through the house, inventing her own spell after having finished three others she had found before online. 

“Hi, ghost,” She spoke tentatively to the walls as she went, pacing the room and lifting the softly burning herb to all of its corners, “Your name is Peridot, right?”

She was trying to be as friendly as she could, follow in the advice of her peers online and approach her with gentle energy. Forget she had been attacked plain as day, scared half to death, to give the ghost the gentle option to leave. A nudge. Hopefully one which would secretly act as a push, would shut all doors behind her, but wouldn’t anger the ghost further. But her attempt sat oddly on her lips and Lapis sighed after a moment, her words falling off with a uncertain pause, not sure how one _could_ remain friendly to the being which had tried to murder them just a week before. She decided to drop the smile and continued anyway. 

“I know you’re not here right now because I can’t see you but I hope somehow you can hear me,” Lapis muttered as she continued her slow trek around the house, anxiety picking up slowly in her chest drawing her to peek around corners, worried suddenly that her trying to banish the ghost would only strengthen her grip on the house, reinvigorate her anger, “I’m sorry if I did anything to upset you but I’d really appreciate it if you left me alone,”

She made her way most anxiously into the kitchen, dreading entering and wanting to rush when she did. Still, she forced herself to linger for long pauses at the table, near the cabinets, hoping to be most strong in her banishments here. And once she had started her paranoia shifted; she could feel herself stalling to leave.

Instead she began waiting in hopeful anticipation for some sort of sign that it was working, sure it would happen in this room and desperate to be proved right. She waited nervously for an angry ghost to come storming into the room from behind her, to hear a scream of pain to show her removal, anything at all to confirm Lapis’s hope or establish her fears. And even when she knew it wouldn’t come, wasn’t sure what such a thing would even look like, she couldn’t stop herself from trying harder to get it. 

“I bet this was your house once,” she spoke gently, sitting down on a dining chair, letting the sage rest loosely in her hand as it continued to burn, “I’m sorry I took over but I live here now. Trust me, I would leave if I could but I don’t have anywhere else to go,”

Lapis found herself stalling again, knowing she still had the upper floor of the house to douse in herb, knowing she should get on with this so she could get back to looking for jobs, to stretching her bank account, distracting herself from her worry, but she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted so badly to find her proof. To know it was working, somehow. But as the seconds turned into minutes of silence, the sage burning reliably in her hand, nothing happened.

“I’ll leave you something at your grave soon,” She said despite herself, pressured to talk, wanting terribly to find something to say to get her to show herself, “Maybe a crystal or at least a flower. I hope that’ll convince you that I mean no harm,”

Nothing more happened than the continuation of the steady burn of the sage in her hand. 

**

It took two weeks more weeks for Lapis to return to the cemetery. Two weeks of nothing from the ghost at all. Two weeks of nothing in her home, no fuming, cursing women rushing into the kitchen only to jump atop of her. Two weeks of nothing odd on her person, no new red marks dotted up and down her neck and chest. Two weeks of nothing at all unusual. 

In that same time, while she was waiting for something strange, holding her breath and not trusting her sage bath, she had at least finally applied for all the jobs she could find. Had used the nothingness which couldn’t quite completely remove her worries to do what she had need to do from day one; send out her resume to all the business within the town she could. And in that same time where she was always checking her neck for splotches, looking in the drawers of the kitchen for her knives, she had somehow managed to actually accrue one. She had gone grocery shopping for the first time. Had unpacked most of her belongings. And, generally, in two weeks time she had shifted from a state of constant paranoia to living mostly normally.

She hated how disappointing she found it. 

She should be grateful. Her spells, the sage, the moon water, the mutterings, found or invented, _something_ had worked. Or else the ghost had given up. No matter what it was she was gone. Had been gone altogether for almost a month. Lapis should be happy about that. 

It had worked. Whether from her own creation or not she had gotten what she wanted; she was gone and Lapis was safe. There was no longer the constant threat hanging in the air that she might again be lurking in a corner, knife in hand, waiting for Lapis to round her hiding spot in just the right way so as to best suit her attack. There was no longer any reason to believe she was coming back, so long that Lapis couldn’t justify it as merely her waiting for a good moment. The tenseness Lapis had carried herself with weeks before was needless now and in consequence her worry gradually subsided.

She wasn’t here. Lapis should be glad that she wouldn’t have to fear for her life any longer. 

And for a while she tried quite hard to do so, be happy about it. She had tried to feel comforted by the stop of the ghost’s presence. She tried to make friends with her new coworkers, jokingly tell them that she was being haunted when they asked about her new house, the new town. She tried to distract herself in the pleasant excitement of her new job itself, a cliché little small town bookstore with only two other staff members and an overabundance of Dickens. It was all she had ever wanted in a low paying, customer service job.

But as the days went on Lapis found the relief waning. The success turning disheartening.

She was disappointed. Thoroughly, wholeheartedly so. Because as much as Lapis was terrified of the idea of this murder-attempting, physics-defying ghost, certainly didn’t _want_ her to come back with more weapons in tow, new horrifying abilities to display, her radio silence was the end of the idea. Her disappearance exactly that; the riding away of the only ghost Lapis had ever known of. It sucked.

It was no secret that Lapis had always loved the idea of ghosts, had always dreamed of living in a haunted house. Of course she would have preferred a passive ghost, one who made itself known in small ways but kept generally away, one which would not try at all to take her life, but Lapis had always been fascinated by the idea. And while she hadn’t been sure if she quite believed in them before, was fairly certain she hadn’t, she had always been fascinated by the stories. Had always wanted one of her own to tell. 

And she had gotten it. Even if this scenario was bad, terrifying and dangerous and awful, this ghost was real. Lapis had seen her, touched her, fought her. And as much as it was a bad, self destructive thing; she was enchanted by the idea. 

It was a ghost, a _real_ , genuine ghost. In _her_ house, in _her_ new local cemetery. And more than the fear, more than the paralyzing dread she had felt for days after the last attack, more than anything else now that time had soothed her terror, she found her enthralling. 

Because even still she wasn’t just a ghost; she was her ghost. One which seemed just as obsessed with her as she was it. And she was pretty and old and full of more liveliness than even Lapis had. And Lapis, from even her first moment of seeing her, felt in some odd way drawn to her. Terrified, sure, but drawn to her irreparably. 

It was what had drawn her back that first day, after she had seen her for the first time in the graveyard. It had called her back, forced her to enter again, find her grave, learn her name, her time of death, even when she knew it was a bad idea. It had drawn her to look for her when she knew she was in the house, to drop her weapons and go looking for her, to find her, to see her. Drew her to have hardly any other focus for weeks now, left her obsessed and rambling and cyclical. 

And while as she had left from work, done for the week with a damaged copy of Goosebumps in tow, she hadn’t been planning on heading to the cemetery, had had no initial intentions of visiting, no wild and ill thought out plans to make today the day she went back, she wasn’t exactly surprised it was where she ended up. Because each day walking past it on her way home grew more difficult. Each day she felt more drawn to it, more curious, more feverishly interested, more and more melancholic for her old favorite pastime. She wanted to know what had happened to her ghost, was frantic to see her to know she was still there, still a possibility, to prove to herself that she had at all been there in the first place. 

So while on that day she had no premeditated plans it wasn’t a surprise to her to find herself turning onto the path that evening. It had always been only a matter of time before she wouldn’t be able to stop herself any longer. 

It was growing colder by then, the autumn weather having finally fallen after it had delayed for so long, and it was growing even colder as the sun was beginning its descent. The air was crisp and deliciously heavy as Lapis entered the graveyard, looking up the path and knowing without thought exactly where she was going. 

Once she had started it did not take long for her grave to come into sight. The cemetery was small and with Lapis’s fast pace, straightforward direction, it fell quickly into her sight. Yet as she approached, could just see the grave she felt so drawn to up the hill, she felt her heart sinking. The old disappointment doubling in her bones. 

She wasn’t there. Lapis could tell from a distance, could tell from ages away when she looked in the direction of her grave, that she wasn’t. Lapis found herself frowning as she slowed her pace, squinting up the hill as the last of the sun dipped down below the horizon. 

She didn’t know what she had expected, realistically she figured she would not find her, was starting to believe more and more genuinely that she had imagined it all in the first place, but as she reached it, saw that old, neatly carved stone just ahead, she still found her chest sinking unpleasantly. She still wasn’t sure why; she should be glad, she shouldn’t even be back here in the first place, it was dangerous to come back, especially after what she had seen, experienced, but this, whatever was happening, was so interesting, so inexorable, so remarkable-

Lapis cut off her own thought process. Blinking her eyes tightly as she took a long breath, balling her fists at her sides as she came to a stop, looking towards the stone. 

She _was_ relieved. She would go home and not come back. She was not curious at all. She wouldn’t let herself be curious any further. She would stop thinking about it, drop the ghosts and the witchcraft and the middle grade horror books out of her life. She would accept her stress induced hallucination for what it was, a mixture of sleeplessness and turmoil, and leave it alone. 

_She was relieved_. She insisted it to herself even when she continued up the path to her gravestone anyways. 

She walked to it slowly, even when she tried to stop herself, wondering, hoping, that maybe if she moved slower she would appear, notice her coming and phase into sight. But by the time Lapis had reached it no such thing had happened. She lingered by the stone, her eyes grazing over the words slowly, not quite reading but following their path across the rock, for a long while. She tried to convince herself to go again, this _was_ a good thing, she was safe, or at least no longer delusional, but when she had turned to go all she truly did was sit down in the grass to stare up at the moon. 

It was still somewhat light outside, the sun’s recent setting leaving the world a murky blue, cusping just barely on the edge of darkness. But the moon hung heavy and bright above her regardless. It wasn’t quite full, was maybe two, three nights away, but Lapis found herself just as enthralled. And after several minutes of looking, tracing the long looked over craters with her eyes, she decided it was a nice enough distraction from her conflicting, whirlpooling feelings.

It’s beauty, sat high above her, solid and unwavering and glowing, drew her to almost forget the conflicting feelings she felt. The battle between her desire to find the ghost to prove its reality to herself, yet her worry that finding the ghost again would only lead to her ultimate loss of life. It’s elegance, hung prettily above her in the heavens, distracting her from the paralleling fear; the terrible feeling she felt when she reflected on just how obsessed she was. She was talking incessantly about her to her coworkers through ‘made up’ stories, thinking of her even more than that, as she walked into the kitchen, looked in the mirror, did anything. She was looking for her always, behind every corner of her home, every alley on her way to work, between every blade of grass now that she was finally back here. The potency of her interest, so fascinated despite how horrified she should be, only worsening her residual nerves from those initial attacks. Why was she so obsessed? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about her? Why did she feel so drawn to her?

Lapis hated it and when thinking about it retroactively it scared her more than she would have liked to admit. She couldn’t help but worry that she really _had_ lost it. Hallucinated or not, she should at the very least be glad it was over, should not be coming back looking for her. 

And as Lapis stared up at the moon above she found herself frowning. Maybe it wasn’t that good of a distraction after all.

Simply being back here, in the cemetery, was making her feel worse about it all. Seeing it again, the rows of gravestones, her ghost’s rest behind her, was making her heart sink and her fear return and her positivity that she was growing delusional and frantic expanded. And as the moon lost its luster, Lapis’s dread overpowering its beauty, as her eyes started to water, leaving it blurry in her sight, she felt all of the long pushed back emotion bubbling up in her. 

She wanted to get up to leave but couldn’t bring herself to. Because even when she was growing increasingly upset, tearful and scowling and bitter, she still wanted so badly to have seen her, even when she knew how terribly irrational and unsafe such a desire was. She wanted so badly to ensure to herself that she was real, that it hadn’t all been a dream and she wasn’t going crazy and her obsession wasn’t so ill advised after all. And now she didn’t want to give up. Couldn’t bring herself to leave. Couldn’t bring herself to move at all. It felt like a confession to her insanity. 

And as the sky grew darker, leaving her alone among the tombstones in an inky black field, eerily dim despite the large moon, she found herself only growing more and more upset. The longer it went, the more empty time which passed with no sign of her, the more sure Lapis was that she had lost it after all. 

After a long while she sighed and she moved to throw herself backwards into the grass, shift her focus to the constellations to maybe cheer herself up. But as she fell, as she hit the ground, her head instantly fell hazy. Dizzy and buzzing like the static tang of a sleeping limb. Her vision went silver.

Her heart skipped a beat at the sensation and she jumped back up so that she was sat straight. Maybe-

A halfhearted little sigh sounded behind her before she could even think, however, causing her heart to spike further, distracting her panicked thoughts and raising fumbling hope in her chest. 

“What are you doing here?”

Lapis turned frantically around at the sound, spinning quickly on her knees.

There she was, perched atop the grave in the same manner of the first night. Legs crossed, eyebrows high, arms crossed. 

Adrenaline shot through Lapis’s veins but even when she jumped to her feet on instinct she forced herself not to run. This was what she had wanted. What she had been waiting for. 

“I was wondering where you went,” she breathed heavily, her nerves drawing her words to waver, her limbs to shake, heart to pound. The ghost’s eyes narrowed slightly back at her and Lapis’s vision briefly blurred around the edges, fear consuming her and leaving her feeling top heavy and weary, but after a brief moment her panic weakened. Even when the ghost glared she wasn’t doing anything. She did not stand. Did not try to attack. Did nothing but look. Lapis took that as a good sign and worked her way through another weak, breathy sentence, “I was planning on bringing flowers,”

The ghost rolled her eyes, her brows rest high atop her forehead in annoyance, and she huffed a bitter breath, speaking low and bluntly, “I am growing exceedingly close to trying to kill you once again,” 

Lapis took a nervous step back but kept her ground, excitement welling in her chest at the conversation despite herself. She was real, “I was worried about you”

The ghost crossed her arms tighter across her chest and her face fell down into a heavier scowl, “Don’t mock me because I will do it again,”

Lapis’s heart beat but again she did not run. Instead she watched as the woman, with her shiny silvery skin, her old dress, her own grave which she sat upon, faced her, looked down upon her, there and _real_ , and beginning to scowl harder. 

It did not take her long to stand, raise from her grave when Lapis did nothing but stare.

“Well?” She bellowed, her voice pronounced, angry “Are you just going to stand there?”

Lapis stood for a moment, shaking and paralyzed and terrified. She only ran when the ghost took a heavy step forward, her fists balled at her sides. 

As she ran down the path, her heart beating in her ears, mostly scared but undeniably excited, she could hear her screaming, “Good! Go away!”

And finally, as Lapis was turning off the path, running into town, a muted “Next time I’ll manage to do it!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felt super in my element this chapter which was nice! Made writing it super quick. A bit of a bridge but next chapter will be a big culmination of things ;)  
> That being said I want to state now that I will be moving, starting an internship, resuming classes, and (hopefully) starting a new job very shortly so my updates are probably going to be pretty irregular coming up again soon. I should still be able to write most days (and am very set on finishing this around Halloween) but I wanted to let you all know now!  
> Anyways, thanks as always for reading! Please leave me a comment! And have a lovely day :)


	6. Chapter 6

Peridot Platt had changed her mind. She _was_ angry. She always had been angry and she couldn’t foresee any future where she wouldn’t be angry. But now such a fact sat especially prevalent in her mind. She was angry. Terribly, miserably angry, and she would likely stay that way forever. 

Although, after weeks of stewing in angerless misery she decided that she would much prefer it that way. All this sadness and defeat which she had been feeling recently was only leading her further from any successes. Walking her into another failure, a failure created this time by a lack of trying.

So, Peridot Platt settled back on an old fact; she was angry and for good reason too.

She felt that she was perhaps more sure of that than she ever had been before as she watched as the girl ran down the hill, rushing away after having come back just to instigate her, taunt her for her failing, coddle her for her useless attempts. But even when the sight made her blood boil, reinvigorated all of her anger which she had dropped until then, she felt almost appreciative. The anger that had reignited in her chest reminding her that being miserable was not her style. That she was right to be angry. That she still had work to do. 

She had suffered through a painful life and a painful death. She was done feeling miserable after all the heartache she had already endured. She deserved better and surely this girl, sent to her by the fate of the universe or something along those lines, was only trying to reassure her of that. She had come back to remind her, pester her for her foolish lapse of judgment.

Peridot would make sure not to take her nudge lightly.

Besides, watching her run, tremble in her place, fear her, was reminding her of something else quite useful. 

She hadn’t gotten what she had wanted before, was near certain by now that such a feat would be near impossible if completely unattainable, but while she hadn’t been able to kill she had been able to do something nearly as exciting. And while she had been blinded by her anger before, distracted by her misery, seeing her now was a lovely reminder. 

She couldn’t _kill_ but she _could_ scare. Could do quite a good job of it at that. And as she sat back atop her grave she found herself smiling, already triumphant of what she knew she would not fail in. 

And even as the girl disappeared along the horizon, dipping below the hill and into town, her smile did not waver. She smirked, staring into the place where she had been removed from her sight, before she turned and slipped into the ground, a plan already weaving together in her mind. 

She kicked the wall of her casket closer to his as she faded into sleep, a laughed, “I finally found the way to get my revenge on you,” slipping out before she drifted away. 

**

Lapis was an idiot. She had decided it as she ran home, shaking and panting but glad to see she was not being followed. Although she only became sure of it over the course of the next few days, as she lurked around corners waiting, kept a constant eye on her knives, a steady stream of anxiety in her chest. Yet even still, despite how confident Lapis initially had been of that strict fact, after nearly a week of nothing from the ghost she had decided to ease her assertion of the sentiment. 

Because slowly, when a day of no sign of her dead enemy turned slowly into half a week, she began to believe what she had thought might have been the case before. The ghost had given up on hurting her, after all.

Although this time, she was happy to find, she was nothing other than relieved. 

As, while she still was enamored by the idea of a ghost, wished she could have approached Lapis with a kinder approach, a want to be friends, she had at least seen her again. Visiting the cemetery hadn’t been a disaster, hadn’t inspired her death, it hadn’t even been a waste, instead it had given her what she had desperately needed; insurance that she _did_ exist, that Lapis was not insane or deranged or completely lost in poetic mysticism. She had seen her. She was real. And now that Lapis knew that with certainty she could move on, could drop her obsession, could let the relief consume her. Genuinely this time, without any of those backwards glances, wondering about what was, wishing to see her once more.

And maybe she still found herself centralizing on the written tales of other’s ghosts, reading old literature and Halloween inspired children’s stories and the occasional blog of a fully fledged believer, but the obsession, the paralyzing fear, the total mental centralization, was almost completely elated.

As a result Lapis felt better than she had in a long while. She let herself focus on the real, positive changes she had yet to appreciate; she had a new job which she actually liked, the new beginnings of friendships with people who she actually enjoyed, no homework lurking over her shoulders, and, most exciting of all, no more ghosts attempting to kill her. 

And even when she was blunt with herself, could no longer pretend in a moment of self realization that she wasn’t still fully obsessed with the situation, with her, this time she really was relieved. She had given up and Lapis was safe. And even if it stung Lapis had gotten what she had wanted, safety, a better start to life, and she wouldn’t let herself go back looking. 

At least she genuinely wasn’t lying about enjoying having put her schoolwork behind her. 

**

When Lapis arrived home from work on Friday afternoon nothing initially appeared amiss. The only thing odd at all in fact, as she entered the house, was her exceptionally cheery mood. 

She had had a good day of work. Taking stock had seemed a daunting task on paper but being partnered to her closest friend in progress had been pleasant. Besides, a long forgotten crate of damages meant she ended up walking home with a bag full of new books in tow. Although she supposed that she had just had a good day in general. With the promise of a weekend easy on her mind and, more exhilarating, a week of ghostlessness behind her, a full, unnoteworthy week gone and past, she was finally starting to feel over it, her. Finally she was starting to feel safe. 

She had let her mind stray, had even picked up a romance of all things at the bookstore, some silly century’s old book about a reform school and useless children. She had let her fanatic obsession ease and tamper off, leaving her feeling for the first time okay, or at least not distraught, about never seeing her ghost again. And as she walked in the door, swinging her bag down on the coffee table of the living room, she realized that she hadn’t even thought of stopping by the cemetery on her way home. And even when the realization sent a little shiver of disappointment down her spine she more so felt proud of herself, happy, even, for being so lax about it all. Finally. 

It was only when she had plopped down on the couch to read at once, excited to start on one of her many new stories when her cool mind and ease was ended. In a sudden siege of thirst she had stood to enter the kitchen. How she wished in retrospect that she had just ignored her desire, had decided to visit a coworker’s home instead, had decided to up and leave without any packing then and there. Alas, she had been none the wiser. 

When she first entered the kitchen she was distracted, lost in thought after having decided to retrieve her drink, in part to muse over which book to start with, and as such she didn’t notice anything at first. She stepped into the expanse of the room, lips pursed in thought, and took a hearty two steps inward before her heart dropped, reality catching back up to her. 

She was back.

The ghost, her ghost, was here once again. Back in Lapis’s home, back for her, after Lapis had so thoroughly let her guard down, sure she would never return. 

What an idiot Lapis had been. How terribly wrong she was, how foolish to let herself believe that her frantic delusion, her misguided hope, that this was all over, would be true. It was worse, though, when she realized just how bad of a situation she was in now. Unprepared for the ghost she was fully at her mercy, no plan for escape, no preparation for a reasonable course of action. The pure vulnerability of it left her insides twisting in a long overdue wave of anxiety, her stomach tightening in useless unpreparedness, as the ghost sat atop the kitchen counter across the room from her, a smile on her face.

Her expression remained solid even as Lapis gave her a panicked look, and as she smiled, so gently, at her, eyes locked with Lapis’s own, the pit of dread in Lapis’s stomach strengthened. She felt weighted down, nauseous, at the expression. It was the first time Lapis had ever seen such a casual, human smile on her lips. In fact all of her demeanor now was overflowing with a sense of normality, causal regularity, and it set Lapis on edge more than she would have expected.

Still, she sat firmly across from Lapis on the kitchen counter, seemingly disinterested in much of anything, let alone Lapis’s visible fear, as she crossed her legs daintily, bobbing one of her feet up and down in a rhythmic and slow motion. Yet even when the action was continuous and seemingly compulsory it was not at all representative of nerves, not when it was coupled with that steadfast and eerie smile. Instead it acted as nothing more than a cocky mocking of the tick, proving her all the more casual and calm than Lapis. All the more above her in whatever was about to happen. 

It was unsettling after her last attack; how she held herself with such poise and nonchalance after she had behaved with rampant lunacy before, and it was distracting enough that Lapis at first glazed over the sight of the knife, which lay just at her side on the counter.

The ghost did not touch it, did not acknowledge it at all, but it’s proximity to her grip coupled with Lapis’s knowledge that she had left both of them in the cabinet after having washed them that morning was terrifying all the same. Lapis felt herself quickly growing woozy at the sight but she was given no chance to run, no chance to think of even fainting, before the ghost addressed her. 

“Hello, darling,” she spoke, her tone low, sniveling and snarky, as she continued the rhythmic bobbing and twirling of her foot, ruffling her dress and pulling Lapis’s attention even more feverishly to the shine of the knife on the counter, sparkling as it was repeatedly blocked and unblocked from Lapis’s sight by her movement, “Did you not miss me this time? I’ve been waiting for you in the cemetery,”

Lapis did no more than gape, unable to truly process her words when she felt herself spinning at simply being addressed. She took a gasping breath on instinct, opening her mouth to speak before closing it starkly once again, dazed and unsure of what had even been said at all. 

She couldn’t believe it; she was back. It was still making her stomach churn, still near impossible to believe. Especially when she had been so sure that the ghost was done with Lapis, so sure Lapis was in the clear and had finally turned over a new leaf. She had been so utterly positive, and being wrong, having to face this again, was making her even woozier than she already was. 

Lapis should have known not to have given up on the ghost. She should have known that a week was nothing to the dead, that she was only being tricked into letting her guard down. She should have known that going back to the cemetery would only instigate her, should have never let that assertion leave her mind. She was a fool. She was an idiot. And even when she was furious at herself for being so stupid she couldn’t get herself to run. 

When her vision finally snapped back up to look at the ghost, whether to confirm she was still there or to check that she had not reached for the knife Lapis couldn’t say, the ghost smiled loosely, cocking an eyebrow. 

“Shy?” she asked, voice high, risen in feigned concern, face warped in a matching manipulative, display. Yet despite the curious expression on her face, the mocked sympathy in the cock of her eyebrows, she gave Lapis only a short beat to reply. When Lapis did nothing but stand in baffled silence she slid off the counter with a laugh, growing quickly from sweet to sinter, moving slow and leisurely all the while. Although Lapis could hardly focus on the course of her action or her laughter, all attention instead was quickly captured on her grabbing the handle of the knife as she slid to the ground, holding it loosely in her grasp, “I had been hoping you would finally bring me my flowers after all,”

“I-“ Lapis started in an instant, stammering in her words as she took a shaky step back. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and even when she scrambled to think of something to talk herself out of this situation, knowing by now not to trust her legs to carry her, instead, to safety, she found she could do no more than stutter, eyes transfixed on the shine of the blade hanging loose in her grasp. 

The ghost snickered again as she started the slow trek across the room, flipping the knife up in her hands, tossing it in her hands, and ultimately drawing Lapis’s eyes up into her smirking face. 

“Don’t worry, dear,” she called as she drew even closer, forcing Lapis to take a reflexive, awkwardly placed, step back, “I didn’t take any offense. I know flowers can be awfully expensive this time of year,”

Lapis felt herself whimpering, taking slow and uneasy steps backwards in time with the ghost’s own, trying to manage her feet, all too conscious of their shaking and threatening to topple her over onto the floor. It was a hard battle to fight, especially when her eyes kept falling down to her hands, instinctively trying to keep a close watch on the knife. 

“What are you doing here again?” she eventually asked, confidence building just enough for her to speak as she felt herself backing into the expanse of the living room. Even so, her words came out shaking and she couldn’t manage to pull her eyes up from where they were still tightly locked on the knife. 

“I can’t visit an old friend?” her ghost laughed, feigning hurt as she tossed a hand up to her chest, “I swear I’ve given up all attempts at hurting you. I’ll prove it even,”

She let the knife fall from her grasp, slide through suddenly outstretched fingers to the carpeting of the living room floor below. It made no more than a soft thud below but Lapis felt her shoulders relaxing slightly. Even when she knew she shouldn’t trust it, knew this must only be another sneaky trick to get her to drop her guard, she was relieved all the same. She only wished she could find a way to get it from where she stood standing over it. 

Her planning was interrupted by a frustrated laugh, however. A tight, irritated sound, punctuated by the ruffling of fabric, the ghost crossing her arms. Lapis broke her gaze to stare nervously into her disgruntled face. 

“You still want it, do you?” she asked, her voice gruff and accusatory as she cocked an eyebrow, “What? You don’t trust me?”

Lapis could only let out a nervous, baffled breath, “What are you doing?”

“I swear,” the ghost spoke, raising her hands in front of her chest, palms exposed, in surrender, “I’ve turned a new leaf,”

Yet as she spoke, maintaining eye contact even, she moved her foot, used a pointy toed shoe to lift the knife from the floor, tossing it up and balancing it atop her toes before kicking it back into the kitchen behind her. It skittered and slid across the tile before eventually hitting the cabinets in the back corner. Lapis watched it go with wide eyes, a new kind of nerves taking a strong hold on her. 

What was happening? Why was she doing this? What was her plan? As much as Lapis wished she could believe that maybe the ghost was being truthful and had given up on trying to kill her she knew it couldn’t be it. Surely it was all a trap to trick her, get her into her grasp. Why else would she have come back? Why else would she be tossing the knives around, acting so threatening? But even when Lapis was sure of that, knew not to trust those deceitful words, what was _this_? Even aside from her act of dropping her weapons, this, all of this encounter had been so irregular, so unsettling that Lapis could hardly even begin to figure out her ulterior motive. What was with the pet names, the constant speech, the attempt at an unthreatening demeanor? Surely if she still wanted to kill her it would be easier to just try again. Wouldn’t it?

Lapis supposed it didn’t matter, and shook her head, balling sweaty fists, to try and figure out a way so that she wouldn’t have to find out, wouldn’t be subjected to whatever kind of trap this was. But before she could even get the gears turning, do any more than realize she was wasting time trying to figure out why the ghost was behaving so oddly, she was interrupted by a laugh. 

Her eyes rose, snapping up quickly in fear, and when she caught the gaze of the ghost, locking their eyes, she was met with the ghost taking a half step to the side, revealing the open kitchen to Lapis with an expectant little, “Well?”

Lapis stared for a moment, baffled, dazed, but decided in a hot rush of adrenaline, antsy and panicked to act before she was killed, that she liked her chances with a weapon better than she did her chance at running. She darted to the kitchen. 

Still, even when she moved as fast as she could, even when she sprinted into the room with the most vigorous, least intimidating path she could think of, it was the wrong call. The ghost fell atop her as she crossed her side, pushing her hard before pinning her down, back to the floor as she was straddled.

Lapis tried not to whimper, tried not to cry out about how obvious a trap it had been, but she didn’t even bother trying to stop the sound when she watched the ghost reach for her other knife, which had been tucked, earlier by the ghost she was sure, behind the entrance of the kitchen just so she hadn’t noticed it before. 

Lapis found it ironic, even as her vision blurred in fear, her breathing coming on increasingly erratically, her throat constricting. How quickly she had put her faith into her giving up after how obsessed she had been with her. How her return had only come after Lapis had ensured herself it wouldn’t happen at all, after she had convinced herself of her relief of that fact. How willing she was to walk right into a trap again and again and again. Yet most of all she couldn’t help but notice the hot irony in the situation when she noticed how excited she was despite her fear. 

Still, her swell of excitement, that sparky, light feeling she couldn’t stop herself from feeling, eased when the ghost started speaking again, sliding the knife across the tile besides Lapis’s head all the while. 

“You know what?” she spoke, her voice high and sweet as she smiled down at Lapis. The sound, so genuinely polite, soft, strengthened Lapis’s nerves; their tonality undoubtedly eerie when Lapis could hear all the while the knife being slid on the tile behind her head, “I’m glad you came back to visit me the other day,” she picked up the knife from behind Lapis, sliding the thing towards her and up, lifting it from the ground so it instead rest above Lapis’s face, and her heart sunk. She should get up. She should push her off and run. She was an idiot for staying here because of a lease. She was an idiot for being so interested in this woman. She was an idiot for letting her guard down. She was an idiot. A terrible, stupid idiot who would be lucky if she lived past this day. 

But even when she tried to move she remained frozen. Stiff on the floor, unable to get herself to move to protect herself. Instead only an increase In the potency of her thoughts occurred when the tip of the blade was brought close to her face, curved in a sweeping line just above her skin without touching it. Lapis froze at the sight, the feeling of the air rushing by, and she tensed, trying to push herself hard into the tile of the floor below.

The ghost only smiled sweetly at her in response, dropping the thing once again beside her head, the sound loud and potent in Lapis’s ears. Yet as it fell the ghost’s smile changed, finally breaking from that pleasant, feigned sweetness into the smirking, devilish smirk Lapis would have expected. She leaned in close all the while, speaking softly into Lapis’s face, “Because it made me realize. I can’t hurt you but that doesn’t mean I can’t _harm_ you,” 

Lapis felt a chill run down her spine at the words, the half whispered way they were spoken, the ominous smile which accompanied their delivery, but before she could do more than furrow her brow, push her back further into the floorboards, the ghost let out a ringing little laugh. Yet just as soon as it had arrived the bouncy little sound tampered off and the ghost stepped off of her in a gentle, smooth motion. 

Lapis felt relief flood her, even when she felt sure that this was just another trap. Tentatively, she watched as the woman briefly brushed herself off, smiling a gentle little smirk at Lapis. Relief continued to pick at Lapis’s veins but she knew she couldn’t be sure until the knife was out of the ghost’s grasp. So, when she took a step back Lapis lunged for the knife, throwing herself at it on the floor, hoping to toss it away, keep it for herself, anything. Yet at the first sign of her moment the ghost moved too, just as quick. She stomped a foot down, stepping through Lapis’s hand as she went for the weapon. It caught onto her soles and she kicked it back quickly with her heel. Lapis scrambled to follow it, desperate, but the ghost‘s kick was harsh enough that it was pulled at once out of reach.

It rushed instead into the corner, close to the other she, too, had lost to the ghost, and she felt terrified defeat wash over her. The beginning of tears began to prick at her eyes and she did no more than sit uselessly one the floor, staring at the knives which had been ripped so coldly from her grasp, shaking in overwhelmed exhaustion and a bitter sense of defeat. The bouncy, cheery laugh which sounded in response only made her terrified, exhausted, defeat sting all the worse. 

“Sorry, dear, but I’d much rather keep this,”

Lapis ignored her gaze, too frazzled to come up with another plan, too shaky and weary to process more than how afraid she was, and she did no more than rise on shaky feet with a half whimper. She tried to steady herself but found her head spinning, her vision swirling, and all she could do was whine pitifully once again and take a half step back. 

The ghost laughed at the sight, “Are you scared?” 

Lapis doesn’t say anything. Simply avoided the ghost’s eyes as she took another few heavy steps back, trying to stable herself as best she could despite her woozy fear, the intense swaying she was doing.

Her struggle was only met with a bitter laugh from her ghost, “Good,”

Lapis only just looked up in time to see her rushing towards her.

She fell backwards in an instant at the sight, terribly dizzy and too startled to catch herself as she jumped, and she crashed hard into the wall behind her. She tried to stable herself, tried to pull herself up so she could finally catch up with the situation and leave, but was caught up to by the ghost before then. She leaned into her close, pining Lapis against the wall and smiling in her face. Lapis looked into her face for a horrible moment, her vision settling to the sight of her smug, cruel smile, before she felt the old familiar sensation of her hands around her neck. 

And even when Lapis knew it wasn’t doing anything, knew the ghost was just trying to scare her, she couldn’t help but feel a jolt of terror run down her spine. She jumped and managed to shake her hands off but not before she gave her a harder squeeze, intensifying the mild sting of her hands on Lapis’s skin and leaving her nauseous.

Still, she had managed to force her off, push at her until she stood several feet away. And while Lapis rest panting against the wall, she found the debilitating, freezing fear had left her. Her vision cleared, the haze lifted, and she finally made way to move, run like she should have done so many times already.

Alas, before she could take more than a step the ghost smiled, gesturing down to her neck, distracting her pace and startling her again. 

“You look pretty in pink,” she smiled, stepping back before reaching down to grab the knife from the floor in one quick motion before tossing it at Lapis. Lapis let out a startled yelp as it came hurtling at her. 

It did not hit her, came nowhere close, instead crashing into the wall behind her, but at the sound of the collision she jumped all the same, the beginnings of tears welling quickly in her eyes. 

Yet before Lapis could even process what had happened, before she could do more than shake, the ghost began a slow and steady trek to the door. She paused briefly in the archway with another pleasant, sweet smile, simply adding a, “I’ll see you soon,” to Lapis before she exited down the hall and out the door. 

Lapis could only watch in terror and bafflement. 

**

Peridot Platt was ecstatic and for good reason too. 

She had figured it out. She had deducted a way to get what she had been wanting and waiting for for a century. Finally. 

But more than that; she had been right all along. She _had_ , with this girl, been given her revenge. The universe was giving her a vessel for her ease of mind. For justice. She had just, up until that point, gone about it the wrong way. 

And boy was she glad. This was so much better. So much more satisfying. 

The murder plots had seemed better before. Kill her killer, if only through way of his long extended genealogy, but nevertheless destroy him once and for all. Get back for all that he had done to her with an equal fate. It had seemed perfect, had been all she wanted. But _this_. This was good. 

She liked being feared. It felt right. 

She had liked it all those years ago when she had wandered home only to find him in the doorway. She had been thrilled, felt sparky, excited electricity running down her arms, down her spine, settling alongside the bloodlust in her chest, when he had fallen to the ground in his terror of her. She had liked it, again, when this idiot girl had run away from her that first night. Jolting with panic in her eyes as she noticed her, as she scrambled to her feet to run down the road. Yelling and deserting like a child, all when Peridot had done no more than clear her throat. She had liked it just weeks before, when she was trying to kill her. Although then she had hardly noticed the satisfaction, too distracted by her goal to take full appreciation of the terror in her eyes. But most importantly she loved it now. When the girl looked up at her with dread in her eyes, sweat on her brow, her hands. She loved the chill that ran down her spine when that flakey little girl shook and whimpered at her actions. Scared of her. Genuinely so. It was exhilarating. 

Perhaps it was how much fear she had been made to suffer at the hands of others which drew her desire to be feared herself. It was nice, she supposed, to be the feared rather than the fearful.

Fearful of her father and what he might do had she approached him about her loveless engagement. Fearful of her mother’s unreadable eye, worried she would let what Peridot worried she had caught in the shadows known. Fearful of him, especially. Fearful of meeting him, of wedding him, of kissing him and touching him and anything else he might require of her. And after; fearful of his voice, when he started to shout at her, not even minutes after having left the church, her still in her wedding dress. Fearful of his anger, of what he might do to her, when they were alone in a new town where people liked him dearly. Fearful of what she should have seen coming. Fearful of what had eventually happened. 

After all of that fearing it was nice to be the feared one. It was nice to look down at those who had wronged her, even if only through their blood, and to feel above them. To know they feared her as much as she had once feared them. More so, even. She felt powerful. She felt right. 

She couldn’t wait to try it again. 

**

Lapis regretted every step that had led her here. 

She regretted having moved in with those two half friends at the end of the summer before her sophomore year. She regretted rushing out and riding rapidly on her bike until she arrived on this doorstep when things turned sour. She regretted calling the number on the sign and signing the lease after having barely seen the entryway, after having just heard the rent price.

But that much was obvious. 

What she really regretted was letting her guard down. Getting comfortable in the house when she did not instantly reappear. She regretted not having taken it seriously, not repeating the sage baths, not continuing with the incantations. She regretted letting herself wish for her, miss her. She regretted visiting the cemetery on her way home. She regretted ever letting herself move on from the attack.

She regretted not being sensible and leaving then and there. 

Because now, after her return, after her threatening and attacking her all over again, she had fallen irreparably back into the debilitating terror. The only change this time being how much worse it was.

She was clutching her knives once again, refusing to at all let her guard down. She sat in the corners of rooms, not moving, not sleeping, petrified. She found herself constantly sitting on the cusp of tears, shaking and exhausted and desolate but unable to get herself to leave. And yet even still she wanted to stay, couldn’t get herself to leave. It was tear inducing how frustrating such a situation was; her being so stubbornly torn between wanting to see her again, wanting to stay, and her understanding that that was idiotic, a death wish.

And even while her fascination kept her grounded in an odd way her interest in the ghost, her want to stay, hardly held the same charm as before. Even when she was disgustingly interested, idiotically unable to leave, obsessed even, she couldn’t at all distract her terror with her curiosity. Instead her focus on her, her inability to leave, unwillingness to think of anything else, only made the fear worse, honed in the fact that she hadn’t slept in three days now. Honed in the fact that she hadn’t moved at all, aside from a singular, dazed shift of work. Honed in just how sure she was that her obsession was going to get her killed. 

She was frozen perpetually in terror; petrified. Her body tense and shaking, overworked so truly, leaving her only more restless and antsy, but even still, she was so scared she wouldn’t dare move from her corner. Because the last time she had given in she had gotten herself almost killed once again. 

She wouldn’t make the same mistake as last time. Even if she never slept again, never dropped a weapon from her hand. She wouldn’t let herself let her guard down again. Not ever. 

**

Peridot Platt was not one to skip under normal circumstances. Even when she had been a child, happier and without so much worry, so much rage, she rarely partook in such a boisterous mode of transportation. Yet as she made her way through town, maneuvering down alleyways, through front yards, to get where she wanted, she found herself doing so anyways. She was just so excited. 

She had slept again for several straight days in preparation, hoping that with more rest she could do more than just toss the knife across a room, hold it directly for no more than a few seconds total. She yearned for more than what she had done before, more than those delicious little half threats, because while those had worked wonders it would only be a matter of time before this girl realized Peridot was using the knife as no more than a prop, a scare tactic that Peridot herself feared, knowing how easy it would be to over exert herself using it. So, in excited anticipation, she had rested longer, letting her energy accrue so she could do more, push harder, scare her all the better. And this time, without the ultimate goal of a murder in mind, a target she was frantic to hit, she had less to worry about. Less chance for a total lapse of energy. More opportunity for greater satisfaction. 

So, well rested, well prepared and vehemently excited, she skipped down the street, drinking in the twilight. She was so elevated that she couldn’t have stopped herself from doing it even if she had wanted to. 

Her excited state only continued by the time she reached the house. The girl, as had been the case last time, was out. Gone at work, Peridot assumed, and with her gone, leaving only empty space in the house, she had ample opportunity to prepare herself. She sauntered into the kitchen at once, skipping on the way, humming a gentle tune.

Although, as she reached the drawer she knew held what she wanted, tossing it open in one quick motion, she found her smile loosening slightly. They weren’t where they should be. 

She didn’t let it deter her though, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that she would move them, and Peridot moved onto the next drawer, throwing it open as well. Slowly, she made her way down the line of kitchen counters, doing much the same thing repeatedly all to no avail. Again, it did not bother her, and she simply reasoned that it must have been left in a bedroom, a bathroom, some odd corner, in an attempt to hide it. She was sure it wouldn’t be hard to find. 

But before she could depart the kitchen to look elsewhere the front door squealed as it was opened. She was back and Peridot, while well rested and still vaguely cheerful, was fully unprepared. 

It was then that the tang of annoyance started. Her perfect plan, forced to be altered at the hands of what was certainly a very poorly hidden knife. She frowned, that little bubble of anger just beginning to build in her stomach, as she heard the tentative first steps of the girl in the home. 

She hopped onto the kitchen counter in impatience, however, trying to revise her plan in her head and hide her being taken off guard as the girl entered. 

“Hi,” Peridot spoke to her coldly as she entered, masking her flustered lack of a plan as best she could although not hiding her annoyance. 

The girl made a startled little noise and jumped back, eyes widening, as Peridot spoke. Peridot rolled her eyes reflexively at the display; how startled she acted for someone who clearly was expecting her. 

Still, even through her visible anxiety, so abundant already, exhibited plainly from her shaking limbs and pale complexion, she spoke quickly, words breathy and nervous but hopeful all the same. It made Peridot’s frown solidify all the more on her face. 

“You didn’t find them?” she spoke, scanning with her eyes along the row of opened kitchen counters, Peridot’s weaponless person, as she stuttered her way through her words. 

Peridot rolled her eyes once more, anger continuing to start its boiling loosely in her stomach, just starting to rise and pick at her chest, warm and tense, “I am above treasure hunts,”

The girl smiled loosely back at her, a bit too genuinely for Peridot’s taste, the tension visibly releasing in her chest. It left her anger rolling over again, growing all the hotter, moving all the more feverishly through her body, “I was hoping so,”

Peridot sneered, the emotion in her stomach continuing its sharp crescendo, growing unbearably hot within her, heavy and weighty and all consuming. She narrowed her eyes, squeezed her hands, even when she tried to keep her tone as level as she could when she spoke. She didn’t want her to see that her petty attempts at being above her were getting to her. Didn’t want her to tell that her plan had fumbled and fallen already. Didn’t want her to see her as anything other than threatening, terrifying and in control. So she did her best to veil her anger, feign a sense of ease. She smiled at her politely, “I thought I’d show you how much more fun it can be to improvise,” 

And with the girl’s eyes intense and wide on her she grabbed a plate from the open kitchen cabinet behind her, slamming it down onto the tile below in an instant. It shattered loudly and the girl jumped, letting out a nervous, startled noise.

Peridot found her smile returning. 

“I’m a bit more crafty then I look, then?” Peridot asked, confidence and control moving in alongside the residual anger in her chest. The mix of feelings left the fear on the girl’s face burning all the sweeter and she found herself smiling bolder into the girl’s startled face. When she did no more than open her mouth, mumble an indiscernible sound, as she stared at the broken plate, the feeling only grew tenfold. Peridot chuckled as she slid down the tile to the floor.

She landed in the glass and while she could feel it in a sense, could detect the weight and shape of it, it phased through her. Still, she kicked away at the pieces as she landed, letting the majority of them go skittering across the room, flying towards the girl who jumped with another set of startled squeals, before bending down to grab a threatening looking shard. 

She enjoyed watching the girl’s eyes focus on it so hotly, how quickly she stilled from her avoiding the quickly moving shards to total, frozen fear. She enjoyed seeing that streamlined sight; the worry so profuse and centralized that it was visibly seeping out of her. So obvious in her eyes, hot and intense on her hands. So clear in her tense stance, knees locked, face tight. Peridot enjoyed the rush of power her fear gave her, the rush of the righteousness which was inspired by watching her shake and quiver. Finally, after years and years of waiting, years and years of torture and misery, she was on top. Finally she was bringing forth the revenge she deserved. 

It left her smiling madly, stretching her cheeks taught and leaving the skin stiff and sore. And before she could stop herself she began teetering on the edge of giggles, mad and bouncy and high. And even when she tried to control herself, try to continue to act blasé and threatening, she couldn’t stop. It felt too good.

It did not go unnoticed, as the girl shrunk back in response, frowning and beginning to shake harder in her stance. Another mad little giggle, a wicked and startling sound even to her, fell out of Peridot’s lips instantly in response to the further display of fear.

_Yes_.

Still, as it released, hot and loud, she managed to force the rest of the string to an end. She brought her smile into only a smirk and repressed the giggles; desperate to keep up the act as she spoke once more, with as much of the levelheaded demeanor of before as she could manage. 

“Sorry about the mess,” she said, speaking lowly as she started across the room, not minding to avoid the glass below her feet as she began walking towards her. 

The girl across from her merely shook her head in open mouthed bafflement. Peridot smiled again, having to push back another giggle as she continued her pace across the room. 

“You’re pretty when you are startled,” Peridot let out loosely, automatically when she was so focused on controlling her madness. And while the words came off how she would have hoped, cold and threatening, their unprompted arrival, complimentary contents, caught her off guard. She gripped the glass in her hand a bit tighter, raising it up to toy with it between her fingers as she tried to ignore the rise of something else, something asides the confidence and growing madness, in her chest. 

Although she couldn’t properly ignore it, she quickly discovered. And despite herself she felt the need to press this girl for answers to useless questions, to speak mindlessly again in lucid, absurd, complimenting sentences. It was frustrating, angering, but even when the familiar sting of anger again swelled hot in her chest that inexplicable other feeling, that one which was growing sharply even when she couldn’t quite identify it, took over.

“What _is_ your name, dear?” she asked, despite her better interests, taking a step closer, drawing them within feet of one another, attempting to maintain her threatening aura even when she let whatever _this_ was overcome her, “I’m realizing now I never learnt it,”

Yet the girl didn’t answer, merely opened her mouth again in startled fear. 

Peridot found herself rolling her eyes in response and she gave the girl only another few noiseless moments before shouting, a cross look stop her face, “Tell me!”

The girl jumped in fear, eyes widening, body tensing but she remained stiff in the doorway, unwavering even in her fear. When she spoke her voice, too, was surprisingly sturdy, nervous only in its hesitant release and lifted pitch. 

“Why?” was what she said. 

Peridot frowned for a moment, the feeling she couldn’t quite place resting on the tip of her tongue, in the expanses of her organs, but she didn’t let herself show it. She overcame it, forced it back for sake of keeping her bitter tone, her threatening demeanor, even when she couldn’t stop the curiosity. 

“It’s only polite,” was what she settled on, smiling as sinisterly as she could when she felt so otherly, so distracted.

“Lapis,” the girl said, through soft and unsteady speech, after only a brief pause.

“Lapis?” Peridot echoed, cocking an eyebrow in expectancy, desperation, although for what she wasn’t fully sure, welling so suddenly in her chest that she could not even veil her speech in malice before it was released. 

“Lazuli,” was the breathy reply. 

“Hm,” Peridot hummed back in an instant, the noise leaving before she could stop it. It wasn’t what she had been expecting, although what she had been expecting, hoping for even, she, too, could not place. That much was certain, but, even still, it didn’t sway her feelings. That uneasy _something_ still sat heavy and distracting in her chest, frustrating and unavoidable, “What an odd name,”

Peridot wouldn’t let herself dwell on it, though. Having grown quite good at burying unpleasantness in anger she took the moment, the terrible, useless, pause in horror she had inadvertently created, to remind herself of _everything_ , trying frantically to replenish her desperation to harm, to feed into the feeling of endless anger, so she could stop whatever was happening to her. 

She let herself be mad at herself, for faltering now when she had finally figured out how to get what she had been desperate for for years now. She reminded herself of her death, untimely and at the hands of the person she had spent so much time trying to please. She reminded herself of her life, ripped from home to a terrible future, one full of unhappiness and misery. She reminded herself of all of the waiting, forced to stay aware even through death, for this exact moment. She reminded herself of what she was destined to do.

And as it started to work, as a fit of quickly rising anger grew in her chest, as the endless years of misery and torment and desperation were brought to the forefront of her memory, she took the moment to lunge, collapse into her skin and drag her to the floor. 

The girl, Lapis, let out a startled little shriek and fell easily with her. Peridot smiled, all of her worry and other useless emotions fading away, leaving her only bubbling with anger and satisfied with the shaken expression on Lapis’s face.

But still, she had not planned all of this just to knock her over. She pulled the glass to Lapis’s throat. 

Her eyes widened in an instant in response, growing glassy as her face contorted in fear. Peridot felt a smile growing on her face, a further swell of anger, pride, rushing to fill her chest alongside that terrible something else. 

“Why are you doing this?” Lapis spoke from underneath her, her words breathy and high. As she spoke she squinted her eyes closed, pulled her eyebrows taught, pressed her back into the ground, let her shaky body convulse all the more rapidly. She looked almost _pained_ and Peridot smiled a bit harder at the sight. Although she didn’t like how intently she focused exclusively on the glass, trying to wiggle away from it, refusing to meet Peridot’s eye to instead center solely on the shard. Her lack of interest in her, while fun for a moment, was hardly as satisfying as Peridot would have liked. She wanted the fear to settle on her alone, not her fancy little toys.

She let the glass fall to the floor, hoping to capture that attention, and she instead began to trace her chin, the edges of her neck, with her finger. Lapis flinched in response to the touch but adjusted her focus nonetheless, finally raising her gaze to meet Peridot’s eyes. 

“Because I deserve to,” Peridot spoke coldly, finally addressing the question which had been asked of her with a smirk.

“What are you going to do to me?” Lapis’s voice wavered as she asked it; pitiful and childish. Peridot found that old, mad joy rising in her chest once again at the sound.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I wouldn’t hurt you,” she smiled, keeping her tone deceptively sweet as she continued to trace the skin of her neck with a single outstretched finger, “I really have realized that scaring you is far more fun,”

The girl frowned beneath her, her eyebrows rising high on her face again when Peridot shifted her weight, allowing her to put a bit more pressure onto her neck without changing her hand’s smooth trail. Lapis let out a soft whimper at the pressure from beneath her and Peridot smiled, letting up before removing her hands from her skin entirely. 

“Although,” Peridot leaned close in, whispering into her face with a wicked smile, “accidents _are_ accidents,”

And in a quick stroke she picked the glass up from the floor and stabbed it down onto the tile floor besides her head. It collided with the floor in a harsh moment and shattered just as its parent plate had into sharp, small fragments. As it went, meeting the floor besides her ear, Lapis flinched dramatically, jumping away from the glass and disrupting Peridot’s sitting. 

Peridot grumbled at the upset of her stance, annoyed at the distraction from the sight of her reaction, but stopped quickly when she noticed she had begun crying. 

It was jarring to see in a way she hadn’t expected, especially considering how deliberately she was trying to get a reaction such as this. And even when she should be pleased with herself, even when she should feel satisfied and emboldened she instinctively jumped off of her, landing on shaky feet. And despite the quick little well of anger that rose within her at her own reaction the sound of Lapis’s continuing cries below distracted her, only drawing out the unease which had caused the reaction in the first place. 

The unsettled feeling in her chest was unnervingly reminiscent of those other unaccountable emotions she had felt throughout the night. The odd and unplaceable feelings that had led to the unacceptable restraint in her actions, the desire for useless information. The ones which made her uneasy in what she should have felt no remorse towards. The ones which left her feeling now guilty for what she knew she deserved to do. 

Although this time it was worse. 

Because even when Peridot took her startled step off, had dropped the last of her glass shard which she had held to the floor without any thought of returning to it, ready to leave and give up again, for good this time, the girl started sobbing harder. 

She clutched at the floor, curled into a despairing little mess, a fetal ball, shaking and gasping for breath on the tile. And worse of all she began fumbling her way through desperate sentences all the while. 

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered into the room, her voice breaking and frantic as she continued to sob, letting out sputtering little gasps as Peridot took another dumbfounded step backwards, “I’m sorry,”

Peridot wanted to leave. She wanted terribly to leave and be true in the statement that she wouldn’t ever come back here. Even if she was still angry, would likely stay angry for the rest of time, she had done all she could, had gotten what she wanted. This girl, Lapis, was traumatized and Peridot had won.

But even still, it wasn’t satisfying.

In fact it hurt. She felt bad. Seeing her work pay off, seeing her crying and broken down on the floor, stung terribly.

She wanted to run from it, from the feelings, from her, more than she could ever express but she felt frozen, locked in guilt. 

The feeling had been building for a long while. It was what had, in part, drawn her to give up the first time, although she hadn’t wanted to admit it then. It was what kept distracting her now, cutting back on that satisfaction she felt, leaving the joy she felt bitter in her mouth. But the guilt now, as she stood frozen watching her sob so openly, helpless and desperate on the floor, made her feel like a monster.

But it got worse. Because just as the guilt, which had been budding and burning for weeks, took her at once, so too, did that miserable something else. 

Lapis looked up in the middle of a sob, speaking again although Peridot did not hear the words, and as Peridot met her gaze, looked upon her grief stricken face, littered with tears that pained Peridot to see, she _recognized_ her. Not just as the girl she had been tormenting, the first living person to have seen her in over a hundred years, but as someone else. 

It was _her_.

Lapis, this girl, looked just like _her_. Exactly like the woman Peridot had been in love with for most of her life.

The lovely, beautiful girl she had grown up with. Her childhood best friend who was so charming and sweet and pretty. The lovely little girl who had lived just down the street, in the charming little house with the pretty little porch, cute and lovely just like her. The gorgeous budding woman she had fallen quickly in love with as a teenager, quick witted and creative and incredible as she grew into her mind, her body. The girl who had made Peridot realize what had set her apart from her peers. The woman she had shared a first kiss with, had wished to and planned to run away with. The woman she had so badly wanted to be with forever and ever. The one she had loved more than anything in the world. The one she was pulled from in an instant, without so much as a kiss, even a stated, goodbye. 

She bore no resemblance to him, to her terrible husband who had inspired her drive into attacking her. None at all. It should have been obvious. Should have been very obvious. My _god_ was it obvious. 

It was almost laughable. She looked _just like her_. The spitting image of that beautiful woman Peridot had known so well so long ago, had spent all of her time since missing but refusing to think of out of sadness. It was funny. She wished she could laugh at the idiocracy of her unknowing. Instead her heart sunk and her stomach twisted and her throat tightened.

Having realized it only now, having the pieces clicking, locking so soundly into place, only after she had haunted and hurt her for ages now, had tried in a wholehearted fashion to kill her, burned more than anything he had ever done to her. More than the abuse and the belittling. More than the mocking and the taking of their neighbor, who too had looked so similar to her. More than having been forced to leave her all those years ago. More than feeling so disgusting for liking her so dearly. 

It felt like she would explode. Felt like she would be crushed, falling inward as the pressure in her chest grew tighter and tighter. 

It was _her_. Her descendant. Not his. 

And even when she had eased her violence, had given up on her attempts at her life, knowing that she had tired well to hurt her, had wanted nothing more than to kill her, was doing her best _now_ to deliberately traumatize her, hurt awfully. 

She was terrible. 

Peridot’s eyes stung, and she felt herself collapse onto the verge of tears in an instant. She tried frantically, with all of her remaining energy to push them back but it fell impossible. As she ran out of the house, into the night, she found herself sobbing openly for the first time in a century, the emotion which had been building up continually beneath her anger since long before her death releasing all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had such a good time writing this one!! This chapter in particular was what had solidified in my mind that I would write this fic and boy was it fun to finally do!  
> That said, thank you for so much reading! please please leave me a comment! And have a lovely day!


	7. Chapter 7

Peridot Platt had never felt worse. Never in life. Never, even, in death.

Never before had she felt so desolate. So miserable. So terrible. A weight heavy and bold, unavoidable and physically painful, sat in her chest. Dragging her down and leaving her looping through stages of worse and worse pain. Never before had such an all encompassing, soul crushing, sense of dread, guilt, misery resided in her person. Never, ever, had she felt anywhere near this awful. 

But then again, even that didn’t quite quantify it. 

She felt so horribly she couldn’t even think. Couldn’t do anything but sit, back to her own grave, and wallow. By then she was too tired to cry any longer and while she was glad in a way that the tears had finally stopped she couldn’t help but notice how much worse she was feeling now that their flow finally had been cut off. 

Her chest ached terribly, more than it ever had before, and the compression was so intense that she couldn’t bear it. Sat with a hand braced against where her heart would have beat had she still been alive, trying to somehow lessen the emotional pain which had swollen so large that it left her in terrible physical pain as well. Her head hurt, feeling bigger than it was, swollen and throbbing and it left her disoriented. Dizzy and unable to focus on anything aside from how awful she felt. 

And in a wave of an extra strong surge of hurt she had to bite her lip to stop the tears from coming on once again. She missed her terribly. 

It had been a long time since she had thought about her, an unbearably long time, and while she had danced about in Peridot’s thoughts for forever, always in the back of her mind, always contributing to her plethora of unhappy feelings, she hadn’t directly thought about her in a long while. 

It had hurt too bad before. She had had to force herself to stop. Stop wondering where she was, what had happened to her, what could have been had she planned just a bit faster, had stolen money from her father a bit more recklessly, had found a definitive place to go with much more certainty. She had felt so guilty, so miserable, that she hadn’t been able to bear it. _Had_ to stop, too upset about the failed opportunity to think about it. Too depressed to reflect at all.

But _this_ , now, hurt far more than all of those times combined. 

Maybe it was in part because it had been so long. The guilt that she had so thoughtlessly removed from her mind surfacing finally. Maybe it was the revelation of what she had done to the one person in the world she had viewed without any disdain; the guilt from _that_ worse than anything. She didn’t care, all she knew was that she couldn’t do anything but feel the shattered, massive, weighty ache in her chest.

She didn’t know what to do to stop it. Didn’t know how to prevent the pain, the tears, the burning. Didn’t know how to stop thinking about it. About how she had hurt her. About how she had ignored her for so long. Her. 

She missed her. 

It was so obvious but it hurt for Peridot to think it. She had spent a long time trying to avoid the feeling, avoid the obvious truth and now, dealing with the hundred years of repressed heart ache all at once, was so miserable she was sure it would have killed her had she still been alive. 

She wished it might anyway. 

**

For all the anxiety this ghost had put Lapis through, all the genuine breakdowns she had caused, perpetual fear she inspired, with the way she felt now Lapis could almost write off all of those other instances. 

In the wake of her last visit Lapis was debilitated more than she had ever been before. Plain and simple terrified. Petrified. Miserable. She couldn’t get herself to leave for work. Couldn’t get herself to walk across the room. Couldn’t do anything but sit, terrified and miserable, in the house. 

She wanted _out_ , was done sitting in disillusioned romanticism, was ready to free herself, desperate to do so, but even still could not get herself to leave. She felt trapped, forced to stay. It was as if she was tied to the walls, cemented into the floorboards. Because even when the ghost no longer inspired even curiosity, interest, Lapis could not bear the thought of leaving.

She was possessed, maybe literally, by the house. By her. Felt she might be torn apart at the seams if she left. So, even when all she wanted to do was get out, escape, rise on shaky legs and never look back, she sat instead in a ball in the corner, consumed with some terrible fixation she couldn’t even begin to swell.

Yet despite all the anxiety Lapis had initially been stewing in it somehow got worse. It had been another half a week and, again, she had yet to return. Although this time the passage of time was leaving her nothing aside from sicker and sicker with an exponentially growing anxiety, one which left her shaking and sleepless and emptying the contexts of her stomach onto the bathroom floor even when she couldn’t recall the last time she had eaten. 

She knew she would be back. Soon likely. And the longer it took the longer Lapis became sure that she was planning something worse than ever. Something which would inevitably result in what she had always been after anyway; Lapis’s death. 

With the thought her fear only grew and grew until, finally, her new friend from work came to check on her. She had only missed two days by then but he came anyway and she was happy to hear him outside her door. Especially considering she first thought that sweet little knocking had been her ghost. 

He had found her thin and desolate, crying as she opened the door for him, sobbing loosely and muttering absurd thanks, absurd delusions of what he had saved her from, and even after he had given her something to eat, comforted her into stability, soothed her into leaving her house for work, the fear remained. 

It came back in clutch when she had first spotted the house up the road on her way home from work. Sitting high and gloating at the end of the street, cold and unnerving in its old architecture, sharp angles. It was a threading building, it always had been, and in the moment it scared her.

For not the first time that day she found a strong sense of clarity coming over her. The house, threatening, dangerous in front of her inspiring a rush of rationale which she had been void of for far too long. She turned to leave, to rush down the street, flag down a bus rolling its way through town, recruit her friend to help her move, but even when she took a step back she couldn’t bring herself to. 

Something was stopping her. Holding her hostage and complicit to this ghost. It drew her into the house again and Lapis began the trek up the driveway despite all that she wanted. 

It was miserable and Lapis found herself loosely crying as she walked inside, that clarity still clear in her mind yet somehow, again, overshadowed by this terrible other feeling. 

She huddled in a heap on the ground, upset but slowing in her sobs as she gave up. Gave in again. 

She was exhausted. And even if the fear had eased slightly it wasn’t enough. 

**

Peridot had noticed her right away. All those years ago. 

They had met in school when they were both young. They had been in the same class, sat side by side in that tiny little girl’s school classroom and discovered that they were next door neighbors. And despite the fact that they were meant to be behaving, meant to be sitting quietly in the back of the room, they chatted through the whole first day, all the other day past then. It made Peridot smile now, remembering how instantly they had become best friends. Even on just that first day.

Peridot remembered exactly how she looked when she first saw her. Peridot had walked in late and she was the first thing she saw, sitting in the back in a long blue dress which flattered her skin tone perfectly, complimented the wavy flow of her dark hair just as well. The sunlight entered in through the classroom windows, brushing against her cheeks prettily. She was smiling shyly when Peridot first saw her, laughing politely at something the girl on the other side of her had said. And even when Peridot could tell it wasn’t quite genuine even that small beginning of a smile was _incredible_. It toyed with her pretty blue eyes, gently wrinkled the skin around them, lifted her sweet round cheeks, brought life to her person. From that first little glance Peridot was captivated and she found herself staring, baffled for a long while after. She had never felt that way before.

She had quickly forced her way into the conversation, sitting in the seat by her side and saying something loud and brash and stupid and this time she _really_ laughed, laughed for her, and Peridot’s heart nearly stopped. 

Becoming her friend was a blessing and as their friendship grew, intensified, Peridot found herself feeling all the happier. Because each day of ongoing friendship she got to see her beauty all the more. She learned the way her face wrinkled, all the sweeter, when she really laughed, hard and real at the silly things Peridot would do to get her that way. She learned the way her hair bounced when she walked and the way her voice rang and lifted as she spoke. She heard tales of her family, her brother and her mother. She grew invested in her interests, captivated by the stories she told and the penmanship which she used to dictate them. And the more she learned the more that light, excited feeling in her chest that she had experienced for the first time when she had first caught sight of her took over. 

It took them both a while to place it. Dancing around feelings and confusion and unprecedented scenarios it was easier to ignore. And while Peridot had realized somewhere along the way what this was it never really hit her fully until they had kissed. And while it was the happiest she had ever felt in her life, finally kissing her after so long, years upon years of holding back, it had also been terrible. Because while they were both excited, both confessing in long overdue sentences, kissing a thousand times over and giggling, they both knew well by then that they could never be together.

Still, they did their best to try anyway. They planned to run away together. To start over in a new town, move in together and be together, even if they had to run away, hide it. 

Yet even then, even when they had drafted routes, began sneaking money to get them there, it had fallen miserably short. 

A calm feeling, a sense of ease, always overtook Peridot when she was with her. The world slowed and the rush to plan was always put on the back burner. So easily distracted from when she was in front of her, so gorgeous and beautiful and taunting Peridot in her divinity to kiss her again. 

She remembered their last night well. Peridot was already engaged by then, her father was on the hunt for her future suitor too, and they should have rushed. And even when she had told Peridot that, swatting her away when she leaned in for the hundredth playful kiss of the night, Peridot hadn’t listened. She was in love and dumb and she didn’t realize that she would be pulled away so fast, that her marriage really was coming up so soon. 

Peridot regretted that night more than anything. Because she was still helplessly in love, had never stopped being in love, but she had let her love distract her and because of that she never saw her again. Never even to say goodbye. They never got to try, even if they had nowhere yet to go. 

It burned so bad. Stung and bit at her chest and she found herself unable to even begin to stop the soft tears which began to roll down her cheeks as she remembered it.

She missed her terribly. And she had lost her. 

She was surely married off soon after, forced to have kids, lead a life as repressed and terrible as hers had been. Although Peridot assumed, hoped, that she hadn’t met the same fate. She was always the more reasonable of the two, the more grounded. Peridot frowned at the soft little joy that rose when she remembered it. All the school work she had sighed before more or less doing for Peridot. All the well thought out poems and stories she wrote in her name. All the plans she mainly comprised even when Peridot had never taken them seriously enough. Maybe her level headedness would have saved her in the end. Peridot frowned. 

She hoped at the very least that she had made the best of it. That her husband was nice enough despite it all and that her life went on easily even through the heartache Peridot had inadvertently caused. She hoped that she had found having kids not as bad as she had often spoken of believing it would be. Peridot was sure that she would have been a wonderful mother in any sense.

She wished she could find her now. Knew where she was, let alone how to get to her. Wished she could find her and apologize for not following her lead, putting her full effort into running away. Wished she could apologize for all she had done recently. Attacking and traumatizing her descendent. A girl who was uninvolved and likely just as smart as her. Was certainly just as pretty. 

Peridot let out a heavy sigh, too emotionally exhausted to cry any longer even when she wished she could. 

**

It had been a long time, although Peridot wasn’t exactly sure how long that was. 

She hadn’t slept much at all. Had only dozed in tiny little bursts because she had _had_ to, began glitching and twitching in sheer exhaustion from all of the emotion after a point. But even then she didn’t sleep well, was restless, thinking, though it all. Instead she had spent most of her time sitting by her grave, picking at the weeds below, pushing around pebbles, drawing pictures in the dirt with twigs, while her chest squeezed and ached. 

She had hoped it would get better with time. That the burning pain which had sat so large and all encompassing in her chest would ease with time. Would allow her to move on. Get her to stop reflecting, stop thinking. But even when she tried her best to avoid it she couldn’t stop seeing her face. She couldn’t stop feeling; the hurt so profound that she found herself constantly pushing back tears, constantly picking at her skin and biting back sobs. She missed her. She loved her. She had hurt her.

She spent almost as much of the time watching the stars, the clouds, the moon, still missing her more than she could bear. Wishing more than anything that she could be with her again, could feel her skin, hear her voice, experience her comfort. Could apologize. Could make things right.

She missed her so bad. It stung and ate her up and left her breathless and lethargic and shaking with guilt. Cramping and squeezed tight with grief. Overflowing with sorrow.

She loved her so bad. More than she ever could have told her. More than all the times she had tried to say it, through gifts and pleasantries and kisses and escape plans.

It killed her to remember now the times when she was with her. It burned and beat at her insides because she hadn’t done enough. She could have taken it more seriously. She could have saved herself from torture, from an early death, had she tried just a bit harder. Could have lived a long happy life, with her at her side all the while. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, kept finding herself looping in repetitive cycles no matter how hard she tried to stop them. It brought with it those same cyclical feelings, those same and steadily growing pains which only got worse when she came to the same upsetting conclusion she always did; she had hurt her.

Back before, when they were both still alive and together. She had pushed off her frantic nature, pulled her into her. Let her down by trying to soothe her. She can’t imagine how frustrated she must have been, how upset, when she woke only to realize Peridot was gone. That they had failed.

Although she felt that that paled to now. Because while this girl, Lapis, wasn’t her exactly she was close enough. Looked so similar, likely acted with a remarkably comparable demeanor, and Peridot had done all of _that_ to her. 

It was awful to keep re-realizing. Landing on over and over again. All the trauma and hurt and insanity she had caused, had created intentionally, to such a similar person to the woman she loved most. It was unbearable to sit with. Yet that was all she could do; there was nothing else at all for her to do but sit, alone and desolate, as she remembered over and over and over again that she had tried to kill her descendant. Had tried to kill that poor, innocent girl who looked just like her. That sweet innocent girl who even _sounded_ like her. Gave her that same sad look, walked with the same sulking step.

It was unbearable. It was pain worse than anything she had known before. And after so many subsequent nights of misery she was only growing all the more upset. All the more guilty. 

She missed her. She loved her. She had hurt her.

Quickly the hurt became so strong, so encompassing, dehumanizing, that she became totally restless. Unable to sit in her sadness any longer. Unable to sit with herself any longer. Unable to sit at all. 

She found herself pacing madly in front of her gravestone, thinking profusely with a miserable ache in her chest. She was a monster. Cruel and wicked and needlessly evil. She should have known not to do anything to this girl. Should have stayed away even _had_ she been the relative of her husband.

But more than that; she should have known. Should have recognized her right away. Should have seen her face and known at once. The fact that she hadn’t only made herself feel worse.

She wished terribly that she could have had the retrospect before forcing away her hurt, realized that dealing with it, even if it never went away, would have saved her from worse scenarios, from this. Had she at all let herself think of her she would have recognized her right away. Stop herself from the unbearable, crushing weight of knowing that her removing her from her mind had resulted in her trying, in cold blood, to murder her great grandchild.

She should have recognized her. Why couldn’t she have recognized her? It was so _obvious_. In all of her; plain in the pretty little slope of her nose, transparent in the long, sad shape of her eyebrows, abundantly obvious in the tone of her voice, bouncy and pretty through all words, even those which had been laced in fear. 

And, lost deeply in thought, emotion, Peridot got up mindlessly, found herself begging to pace up and down the length of several rows of gravestones, and then several more, until she quickly found that she was slowly making her way down the path entirely. Was stepping freshly onto the pavement marking the end of the cemetery.

She stalled in her step as she noticed it, a terrible little desire suddenly arriving in her chest. She tried to stop it, herself, but in a rush of emotion she found herself unable to do so. 

She took a step out of the graveyard. 

She wanted to apologize. Even if it was a terrible idea. Even if the girl would surely want nothing to do with her, react in petrified fear at the sight of her after what had happened the last time. But she couldn’t stop herself. She was too guilty to bear going back to her grave. Too grief stricken to give up any attempt at rectifying things. Too helplessly in love with a woman she hadn’t seen in over a century to let herself off without at least trying to apologize. 

Still, when she realized suddenly, in a wave of surprise, that she had arrived at the front door she stalled completely. Staring down the wood, the door that once was hers, was picked carefully for the house by her husband, specially for them, she felt frozen in dread. Miserable about the prospect of scaring her, knowing that this would never make amends; mutually as miserable about the idea of leaving without trying. 

She bit back a pathetic little whimper in the end, an overflow of emotion which had started to become almost commonplace for her, and took a heavy breath before she knocked on the wood. She had to try. 

It was weird. Knocking on her own door, knocking on _her_ door, when she had grown so used to just walking in. Skipping in even, ready to kill. Still, it felt better. And, quickly after she had knocked she heard footsteps inside. 

Her heart rate spiked but she hardly had time to react, to change her mind and run, before the door swung open. 

Lapis stood in pajamas, an already disheveled and frightened look on her face when the door was opened. 

“Hello,” Peridot spoke, the word accidentally leaving as a timid question rather than the polite introduction she would have hoped for. 

The girl jumped back, limbs shaking and eyes wide, and she quickly slammed the door shut. Peridot remained in stunned silence, alone on the stoop. 

She stood only for a short moment, surprised and quickly growing disheartened. Yet, after a few moments of waiting, willing her to open the door again, she had to accept it wouldn’t happen. She sighed, trying to shake the quick well of frustration which was rising in her chest, deciding that this was at least better than the worst scenarios she had imagined. With the end of her breath she turned on her heels but before she could take more than a solitary step the door cracked open behind her, a squeaky, loud sound. 

Peridot’s heart rate spiked with excitement and she turned quickly, catching sight of Lapis, whose head was just barely peeking out around the corner of the still largely closed door.

“Wait,” she spoke from inside, her tone blunt and hard. 

Peridot turned fully, planting her feet to face her as she hid behind the door. She tried the best attempt she could manage at a friendly smile while she waited for Lapis to respond. 

“What do you want?” Lapis spoke after no more than a second, her words just as hard and demanding as last time. Peridot felt nerves riding in her chest at the sound, although she tried to suppress them. At least she came back. Was curious. Peridot hoped she could convince her of her honesty. 

“I came to apologize,” she spoke, forcing the words out while also trying to keep them as unthreatening as possible.

She supposed it worked, as the door opened wider, revealing Lapis in full to Peridot who found herself smiling in response, “What?” Lapis asked, the word falling out low and expectant.

“I’m sorry,” Peridot repeated nervously, watching as Lapis’s eyebrows fell, her eyes narrowed. She didn’t believe her. 

Lapis repeated herself again, an eyebrow resting high atop her forehead all the while, “What?”

“I shouldn’t have tried to hurt you,” Peridot replied, again trying to keep her words as cool and unthreatening as she could, “I-“ she started, words of what happened, what she had thought, just realized, resting on her tongue, but at the last moment she bit them back, that old, all encompassing feeling of shame reappearing for the first time in nearly a century. Dread welled in her stomach, “I-“

She found her words tapering off and she looked into Lapis’s eyes, so much like her’s, and at the sight, her diminishing patience, doubt, felt that panic beginning to rise again. She had to prove it to her. Had to tell her. All of it, everything. 

She took a step closer, reaching an arm out as she tried to gather her courage but in an instant Lapis yelped and jumped back, moving into the expanse of the kitchen and exposing her hands, which she had up until then hidden, revealing a knife in either one. 

“I’m not stupid, you know,” she told Peridot meanly. 

“I-“ Peridot responded, stunned, “I know. I don-“

“Get out,” Lapis interrupted, her words harsh, threatening, as she held her knives out a bit further in front of her. 

“But-“

“If you’re really sorry than you’ll leave,” Lapis spoke, her words still harsh, startling as she took a step closer, landed in the doorway, “Leave me alone and don’t try anything again,”

Peridot stalled, anger briefly working its way into her chest, making her want to scream at her, shove her, grab a knife from her hands and try to kill her all over again, but the feeling was short-lived. Almost as soon as it had arrived it fizzled away and she was left only feeling desolate again, all the more so after she had felt the need to try again. She sighed, trying to hide her emotion as best she could, “Okay,”

With that she turned on her heels and started down the hill. She made it halfway down the drive before Lapis called to her, timidly and softer than she had all night, confused.

“Really?” she asked.

Peridot turned to look at her over her shoulder smiled as best she could, “Indeed,”

Lapis narrowed her eyes, waiting, suspicious, and when nothing else came Peridot started her trek down the hill once more. When she did she could hear the door being closed and locked behind her.

**

Well it hadn’t gone _well_. But Peridot should have expected that. 

She didn’t know what had possessed her. What terrible stroke of insanity had caused her to believe any attempts at rectification would ever work. 

Of course she wouldn’t trust her. She would be insane too. Of course it would just read as another sinister trick. It certainly felt like one. Peridot couldn’t at all hold it against her that she had been unreceptive. But even still, even when Peridot knew it only made sense, it burned. 

She wanted to make things right more than she could ever express. Felt worse than she ever had before at having failed. And no matter what she did to try and ease the burn, no matter how many times she told herself that she had done all she could, reminded herself that she had tried, would genuinely leave her alone from then on, it still left her feeling desolate.

She wanted to try again. Terribly so, she wanted to go back to her home and beg, on her hands and knees if she must, for her to listen. She would tell her all of it, the whole story; of them all those years ago, her husband, her resemblance, her mistakes. She would make it better. 

But the thought only made her more upset. She wanted her to stay away, was afraid of her. Peridot had done more damage than could ever be rectified. She needed to leave her alone. It was all she could do to make things better. 

Still, it didn’t ease the pain much, in fact it only left her feeling all the more defeated, misery sitting hotly in her chest, growing by the minute. She wished instead that she would walk all the way across the country, all the way back to her hometown. She wanted to try, helplessly she knew, to find her grave. She wanted to go crawling back to her, get lucky and find her, too, ghostly and at the foot of her own gravestone.

Peridot found herself teary at the thought. A brief and excited spur of joy running down her spine before she realized how absurd such a wish was. Besides, even if she made it why would she still be there? No one else was, no one else other than her ever had been. She was the only one stuck in this miserable, never ending limbo.

Still, she wanted it bad. She really did miss her.

She had for a long time. Even if she had kept pushing it back, ignoring it for sake of her overall emotional balance, knowing it was far too painful to think of. Despite all of the repressing she had done she never did stop missing her.

Although she supposed that waiting, only thinking of her again now, made it worse. She felt like she had ignored her. Forgotten about her. Had given up on her. Peridot didn’t want her to think she had forgotten, didn’t want her to feel abandoned. And even if she was sure she couldn’t tell, would never find out, it still stung. She was a terrible partner. She was a terrible person. 

She groaned, tossing her head back and slamming her fists into the earth behind her. She was vividly angry, for the first time in a while. And even when she knew it was just that same old defense mechanism, she was burying her sadness in rage, she let it be. At least this time she was angry at someone who deserved it; herself. 

Still, as the anger rose it took more and more of her will not to go back, be more forceful with her apology. She wanted to start over, be headstrong and assertive, assure her of her guilt. Convince her without a doubt.

She wanted it terribly, more than anything, but she held herself back. Because even when it was all she wanted she knew it wouldn’t work; would instead go, certainly, far worse than even last time. 

Still it was hard to stop herself from standing, rushing to try. She buried her fingers into the ground, solidifying herself in the dirt to stop herself from moving. 

**

Lapis only really had one thought about what had recently happened and it went as follows: what the fuck?

No, seriously. What the fuck?

To Lapis’s surprise she wasn’t as panicked as she would have expected. The unavoidable, all consuming, terror was not reinvigorated, somehow, despite all she thought possible, but instead was fuzzied, completely written over, by confusion.

What had happened? 

The ghost had come and knocked. Asked for forgiveness. Spoke nervously and without an air of domineering. But more than that; she listened to Lapis when she asked something of her. Left when she demanded it. Left her alone. But why?

She had made it clear before, although Lapis still wasn’t sure how much she believed it, that she was no longer trying to harm her. The murder attempts had vaporized for a plain spoken new goal; to terrorize and traumatize. Lapis was sure this was just a new brand of that, some new, wicked plot of hers, but why this course? Even when Lapis was sure, positive beyond any shred of doubt, that this new asking what she wanted, apologizing, was just some new tactic, probably an attempt to get her to let her guard down, she didn’t get it. Because after all, Lapis was still scared irregardless. Very clearly so. Aggressively so. Why spend so much time, give in for the day, to trick her when her old tactics were still working?

It made no sense. Less than all the other things that hadn’t made sense about this so far. Lapis frowned, sitting down on the floor from where she had stood, knives still held in her fists, right inside her doorway thinking.

It was some terrible trap. It had to be. Odds were she would be sneaking in through the backdoor to kill her any minute now. It must be. Because what else?

Yet the longer time went on and she did not return, the more Lapis sat and thought about it, the certainty she held in that began to diminish. Because, as much as Lapis hated to think it, hated herself for letting the tricks work on her once again, she felt like she had been genuine. 

Her acting had never been great. While she _was_ threatening, _was_ terrifying, her attempts to be calm or charming never truly worked. She was just too angry, too scary, to play it off. That devilish little joy always shone through under her eyes, the occasional slip into mad laughter never in low supply, and while the failed attempts at acting had always before played into Lapis’s terror, coming off eerie in their own right, _this_ didn’t feel at all like those half formed attempts at emotions had. It felt real. 

There was no malevolence behind her words, no smirk lying in wait under her eyes, no sense of an underlying, sinister, motive. Instead she had held real feeling in her eyes, soft and tense in a way that displayed nerves, genuine, human nerves. She had acted calm through it all, genuinely so as she held herself away from Lapis, doing as she was asked, all while levelheaded and easy, nothing aside from an odd feeling of sadness in her eyes. It felt _real_ and as much as Lapis knew she was doing nothing aside from digging herself into a new cycle of calm before utter despair she found herself thinking that same thing over and over again. It felt real. 

She groaned, throwing herself back onto the floor and dropping her knife so she could squeeze at her face. 

She was a fool. She knew it. Could feel herself gleefully stepping into the spider’s web for the hundredth time since she had moved. But even when she knew she was doing it she couldn’t stop herself. 

**

Lapis still wasn’t sure what had happened a week later. Was continually confused, continually perplexed, by whatever the hell the ghost had been trying at, but she decided, at least, that the distraction was good. The confusion kept her anxiety down, her debilitating panic chased away, enough at least that she could function. Because even while she still watched the front door, checked on her knives, kept herself out of open spaces in the home, she made do. She went to work. She ate. She slept. She held herself together. 

Although the more time passed, the more Lapis cooled her guard, soothed by confusion, the less that confusion became appreciated. The confusion suddenly ruled, cycling through her mind perpetually and, despite all better judgment, she grew obsessed again. 

She wanted to know more. Why was she doing this? Especially as, the more time passed, the more soothed she felt, the more she believed that the melancholy in her words, demeanor, couldn’t have been faked, not by her. Desperately she found herself thinking about it, trying to place what had changed, what had caused her luck, and the more stumped she became the more she became possessed with her worst idea yet; she wanted to talk to her.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it; letting her apologize, letting her speak, figure out the why, the how, everything. But more than that, she let herself hope because a ghost, her ghost, Peridot, might want to speak kindly with her. 

So, even when she knew she was being insane, walking for the millionth time into the same trap, she went back to the cemetery. 

It would just be a stroll through, she had told herself as she went, a chilly Wednesday stroll before work. She wouldn’t let herself stay, was a bit more self controlled than she had been a month ago, but still. Even when she had just entered, had just taken that first step onto the soft dirt, damp with the fall moisture, a chill ran down her spine. She was excited, desperate.

When she passed her grave she wasn’t there. Lapis wasn’t exactly surprised, she had picked a time, early afternoon, when she hoped she wouldn’t be, but even still, she couldn’t stop herself from pausing for a moment to look at her grave. Trace the tops of the stone with her fingers. Look longingly at the long grown over disruption of the Earth. 

And, despite herself, she found herself doing what she told herself she wouldn’t but knew in the end she would. She left a tiny little note she had written days before but kept being too afraid to deliver at the foot of her grave. 

_ If you are genuine you may come back. I want to talk. -L _

She only realized the weight of how insane she was being when she had gotten home. 

**

She didn’t come for several days and the anticipation was killer. 

Lapis kept wondering if the note had blown away, if the ghost had somehow missed it, or she was just taking her time to properly place a way to finally kill her, but even when Lapis quickly became desperate to take it back, confront her and say she revoked the offer, steal back the paper, _anything_ , she wouldn’t bring herself back.

As with the leaving of that stupid, terrible idea of a note she had inadvertently revived her anxiety. Found herself again debilitated in paranoia, terror. And while it was better than it had been at its worst it still left her miserable. Still left her overwhelmingly frustrated with her absurdly stupid actions.

It was after three days of terrible, tense waiting she finally got a knock on the door. 

She had been reading, trying frantically to distract herself, when the sound entered the room and she had nearly thrown the book down in fright. She briefly debated leaving it as fear pooled in her stomach, pretend she was asleep or else not home, but the thought was short lived. She jumped to her feet. 

It was only when she swung the door open into the face of the ghost when she realized she didn’t have a knife on her, had left both in the sink, and her heart sunk. 

The ghost spoke quickly however, distracting the panic, if only slightly, “Hello,” she said, her words tense and forcibly cheery. Yet even when Lapis found adrenaline flooding her veins she decided it didn’t feel malicious. Just awkward, “I received your message,”

Lapis took a heavy breath, the sound coming out shaky and uneasy in front of her, “I figured,”

The ghost laughed, uncomfortable, and rocked on her heels before she cleared her throat, her expression growing a bit more somber as she spoke again. 

“I do genuinely apologize,” she addressed Lapis formally, the words rushed, rambled as they left her lips, “I hope that I can convince you of that,”

Lapis did no more than breathe, furrowing her brows as she looked at her face. It was uncomfortable for a moment, the silence heavy as the ghost expectantly looked back at her, smiling nervously. Lapis waited for her to speak, wanting more, but when she did nothing but look back at her she found herself speaking instead. A flustered, useless, “I hope you are telling the truth,” all that came out. 

Peridot smiled a bit more genuinely across from her despite the uncertainty to the words, her eyes lightening where they had only felt anxious before, “I am,” she nodded, “I was glad you wanted me back at all,”

Lapis laughed nervously, tense worry staying solid in her chest, growing stronger with the unexpected sensation of the budding awkward air, “I can’t seem to stop myself from looking for you,”

Peridot smiled awkwardly and Lapis felt her insides tighten, “Well, I suppose I’m glad. It gives me another chance to apologize,” she sighed heavily at that, briefly breaking eye contact to look around anxiously, “I acted rashly and without logic. You’re not who I’m angry at and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you,”

Lapis starred in stunned silence for a moment, forcing herself to wave off the awkward feeling in her chest, forcing herself all the more to remove the anxiety. It was stupid, sure, but the first little bit of information was peaking out of the corner. Lapis was too curious, too madly excited at the idea, to stop herself. The tension eased in her bones and she spoke back, quickly.

“Well, who _are_ you mad at?”

Peridot’s eyes widened in response, a sudden and instinctual reaction, and only after a second did her face fall, an eyebrow twitching high atop her head all the while. When she retorted her words were hard, “I _am_ sorry, you know,”

Lapis felt her face warping in response, a dull sense of annoyance rising in her chest despite herself. Still, she tried to level her head, bite back the disappointment even when she could feel herself frowning.

“Alright?” was what she managed as a reply, but she took a step back all the same, letting her in, wanting to pick at that scab which had finally been revealed, “Want to come in?”

Peridot’s face lit up in an instant, seeming sweet, sincere, and Lapis found her annoyance bubbling out slightly at the reaction. 

“I’d appreciate that,”

So Lapis, despite all that was smart, led her into her home willingly. Settling them on the couch she sat nervously, watching as Peridot followed suit. An absurd and asinine little wave of excitement rose in Lapis despite herself and before she could stop herself, before she could even begin to assess the risks, she began to ask Peridot frantic, scrambled questions about her being a ghost. 

It went on back and forth for a long while, and while Peridot hardly revealed anything she couldn’t stop herself from asking for more. Because even if it was nothing, senseless and stupid, she was responding. Seemed to be trying to reply as best she could. Lapis felt like she was finally scratching a perpetual itch she had had since they met. She kept on despite herself. 

“Are there others?” she found herself asking at one point, in the height of her excitement, and the words spilled out in clear reflection. 

Peridot only frowned in response though, seemingly unphased by Lapis’s intense interest, before she responded back, “I haven’t met any others,”

“Why do you think you became a ghost then, if it’s not normal?” Lapis found the words tumbling out in a frantic, fast pace, “Were you unjustly murdered or something?”

Peridot’s face warped quickly in response, instantly and seemingly instinctively. It left her appearing caught off guard, startled, and the way in which she tried to quickly cover up the feeling, lowering her eyes and straightening her posture, made Lapis believe she had some idea. Still, she only responded with a flustered little, “I’m not sure,”

The words, so tense and uncertain, hung in the air for a while and as the silence heavied, sat, her eyes slowly grew wide and vaguely panicked all over again. 

She was a terrible actor.

Lapis felt her eyes narrowing despite herself, she didn’t like that she was being lied to by the ghost so plainly based on the circumstances of their relationship but she, again, pushed past her better judgment to prod more, hoping, maybe if she approached the situation a bit differently, she could finally get an answer, something interesting. She cleared her throat, pushing back the worry, annoyance, “Well, why do you think I can see you?”

The ghost again reacted in a quick, sudden movement. She jerked back, the same panic rising in her eyes. Although this time she did not even try to calm herself before she began speaking.

“I-“ she stuttered quickly, “I’m not-“ she fumbled, cutting herself off just as quickly as she had started. She took a scrambled look around the room, panicked and exaggerated, before her eyes suddenly softened, focusing on a solitary spot. Lapis found her brow furrowing a bit harder as she followed her gaze, unsure as to what in particular she was looking at. Although she hardly had to figure it out herself as, just as sudden and bursting as her panic had been just a second ago, Peridot’s fear dropped and she spoke once again. 

“What is that?” She asked, suddenly and unexpectedly, pointing down at the book Lapis had been reading before she had arrived, which lay, now, haphazardly on the floor just ahead of them, with a serious expression. 

Lapis huffed a half laugh, confusion budding in her chest even more than it had been before, “Um,” she stalled, the sound coming out long as her frustration clouded her thoughts, “A book?”

Peridot groaned, in response, a low, annoyed sound which would have, under clearer circumstances, worried Lapis. Instead she could only cock her head more as Peridot continued to stare hotly at the book on the ground, “I know that! What book is it?”

Lapis huffed a confused little breath, searching for something more, something which might clear her confusion, reveal the nefarious plot underneath this distraction, but when none came she leaned forwards for it, picking it up in her hand and flipping to the cover, “It’s called ‘Camp Pining Hearts’” she uttered, the words falling out low and annoyed, “Some stupid romance I got at work,”

Still, Lapis turned to look at her, waiting for the pieces to click, the attack to begin, but it didn’t come. Instead she only caught sight of Peridot as her cheeks became suddenly flushed, a startled expression solidifying itself upon her face. Lapis frowned in confusion but could let out no more than a huffed breath before Peridot spoke again, quickly and with a dazed quality to her words. 

“I’ve read that before,”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow, “Yeah?”

“Yes,” she responded, her words soft and shaky as she stared at the book, seemingly transfixed by it as it sat in Lapis’s hands. 

Lapis cocked her head again, expecting more, but, again, nothing came. A long pause followed, profound and heavy silence where Lapis sat in confused annoyance, watching as Peridot stared longingly at the book. It lasted longer than Lapis would have hoped for but eventually Peridot stood suddenly, clearing her throat. 

“I should probably leave you be now. It is getting late,” she stated, her words well articulated if rushed. She moved to leave, rushing quickly up and to the door and Lapis, confused and vaguely annoyed, quickly stood after her. 

“But I-“ she tried to interject, angry that this went so anti-climatically. No answers, no deep revelations, not even an attack. But Peridot cut off her words before she could finish arguing, speaking without turning to look at her. 

“You may visit me at the cemetery if you like. If not I understand,”

“I-“ Lapis tried again, following as Peridot swiftly moved toward the door. Still, she continued to rush towards it and only briefly paused to speak once more before she left.

“Goodbye,” 

**

Lapis didn’t trust her, she wasn’t stupid, but things had been different than she had expected they would be.

A long con, it seemed, her ghost was planning this time around. Trying, somehow, to cool Lapis’s tension, trick her into giving in. Lapis knew it and she wouldn’t fall for it; let the unease, the tense air, of their last conversation guide her and remind her. Peridot was lying to her. It was clear as day. Lapis was smarter than that. 

Although maybe not; as the days passed Lapis became quite certain that she was an idiot. 

Even when she saw it coming, _knew_ that her betrayal of Lapis’s trust was on its way, she found herself letting it happen anyway. Because even now, despite everything, despite all the trauma she had been put through, all the misery, she was still obsessed. Fascinated. Desperate to see her again. 

A ghost! She didn’t think she would ever get over it. And even if such a reason for letting herself get fooled was absurd and terribly thought out she couldn’t stop herself from letting it happen. She was too excited, too mystified, too entranced. 

So, even when she knew it was a terrible idea, knew she was a fool and an idiot and likely walking to her death, she wasn’t exactly surprised to find herself entering the cemetery late one evening. And even when she only realized that her bringing a knife for ‘protection’ would not only be unhelpful but likely a danger, something the ghost could use against her, an excuse to drop the act, she couldn’t get herself to turn around. 

The prospect that maybe, maybe by some miracle, she wasn’t lying was just too exciting for her to get her feet to slow. Too exhilarating to stop the gamble. The obsession she had had for as long as she had known her far too intense for her to even really try to stop herself. She knew by now that she would go anyway. Knew there was nothing she could do, no danger she could anticipate, which would turn her away.

So she decided not to waste her breath and, more cheerily than one probably should behave when knowingly marching to death’s door, she continued on the path. 

The passage of time, their swift moving into heavy fall had left the cemetery all the prettier. The leaves drifted down from the trees, orange and yellow and red like cheerily little Christmas lights, and they floated down to sit heavy on the path. Crunchy and pleasant to step on, pretty and nice to observe. It was peaceful, beautiful, although Lapis hardly acknowledged it as much as she otherwise would have.

Even when she tried to keep a slow pace, enjoy the view, convince herself to leave, she kept finding the speed of her step increasing until she could just see her grave up the hill, resting peacefully just on the brink of the horizon. And just as she found it, her eyes finally settling upon it, the ghost looked up from where she had before only stared at the ground.

Lapis’s heart rate spiked, anxiety and excitement mutually pooling in her veins, a delectable and deadly mix, when those shiny silver eyes locked with hers. She had been spotted now. No chance to turn and run. 

Still, even when she fully expected to be ran at after having been led so stupidly to her, fallen right into whatever trap she had been setting up since she had conceived of this new murder plot, all she got was a genuine, surprised smile. The ghost stood and even when Lapis reflexively jumped, ready to pull her knife, rush down the path, her nerves quickly settled. She was just waving at her. 

And even when Lapis knew it was surely just a trick to get her closer to her, further from home, town, safety, she let herself walk towards her anyway. 

She walked quickly, antsy to get whatever would happen over with, hopeful that maybe her smarter instinct was wrong, and when she finally met her she was slightly out of breath. She wished she wasn’t, it left her weakened, visibly vulnerable, but, even when a new wave of hot anxiety budded in her chest, there was nothing she could do about it now. She tried not to worry and let out a breathless, “Hi,”

The ghost smiled at her awkwardly, an uncertain tenseness resting in the expression on her face but she replied with her own soft spoken, “Hello,” all the same, “I didn’t think you’d come,”

Lapis swallowed, hot anxiety burning in her chest despite her attempts to quell the feeling. Still she took a long breath and replied, desperation to know, see her, speak to her, overpowering. 

“Me either,” she settled on, her words coming out breathy and fumbling in their delivery.

Still, even when the vulnerability of the sound worried Lapis, Peridot did not spring into an attack; did not pull a vine around her leg to knock her over or throw a rock at her head to knock her out or try to bury her alive in a well hidden hole like Lapis worried she would. Instead all she did was awkwardly laugh, a high and slightly unnerving sound but nervous and reassuring all the same. Lapis found herself mimicking the noise too after a moment, even if her’s was a bit more washed out in anxiety than the other’s. 

They stared at one another for a long time, both waiting, both anticipating the next move, a sudden outburst. It was tense, anxiety inducing, and Lapis felt a wave of nervous nausea overcome her. But still, nothing had happened yet. Peridot seemed unprepared for her, almost genuinely unexpecting. She decided to take that as a good sign and tried to cool some of her anxiety when Peridot broke the silence with a sigh.

“I really _am_ sorry, you know,” she spoke, her words softened and solid.

Lapis sighed, the breath sitting high in her chest, tense and squeezing, and she could only shake her head. She felt dizzy, anxiety overcoming her when her logic overcame her. Peridot was lying. Lapis has fallen into her trap. She scrunched her eyebrows and tried to level her breathing, conceal her fear, as Peridot sighed sadly in front of her, the sound heavy and exhausted. 

“I know you probably think this is just another trick, and I get why, but I promise I am,” she spoke gently, her words gentle and seemingly sincere as she looked around the cemetery sadly, “I shouldn’t have tried to hurt you,”

Lapis only watched for a long moment, residual anxiety sitting hot in her chest, although, somewhat stupidly, calmed, “Um,” she croaked, “Thanks,”

Peridot paused for a moment, staring at her intently through silvery eyes, before she laughed, a snorted and sweet sound, which was not at all laced with insanity. It still set Lapis’s heart racing with nerves but when she only smiled politely at her as the sound tampered off, a real, human smile, the fear released itself, “You’re too trusting. Lucky I really am done with attacking you,”

It shouldn’t have been a comforting thing to hear, should have sent her running, especially now, when Lapis was quite certain that she was lying, but something about the way it was spoken made Lapis’s worries ease. She seemed tired, given up, genuinely, and all that rose in Lapis’s chest was the old hot excitement. Growing stronger and stronger when she realized that her, the ghost which had consumed all of her thoughts as of late, was finally, maybe, being kind to her. 

So, as Peridot settled herself down atop her grave, crossing her arms and smiling up at her, Lapis smiled back in response, the expression somehow coming out easy despite the anxiety in her chest. She sat down in the grass, a cocky, excited feeling swelling in her chest. 

“Not of people;” she replied with a smirk, “only ghosts,”

Peridot laughed, smiling down at her, “Clearly such a motto has worked out well for you thus far?”

Lapis shook her head, leaning heavier back into the grass, “We’ll have to see what happens by the end of the night,”

Peridot shook her head, smiling for a long while before a sudden sad look fell upon her face. 

Lapis cocked her head, “You okay?”

Peridot smiled a solemn little smile, “Yes,” the sound was heavy, sad, but even still, it held an underlying sense of sweetness. Lapis smiled despite herself, “You just remind me of an old friend,”

“Oh?” Lapis laughed, raising an eyebrow boldly on her face, “You try to kill her, too?”

Peridot smiled, a huffed little half breath falling out of her lips, “Never,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Demyx for the idea of old timey CPH. It made me laugh and I'm glad it finally worked its way into this fic  
> Next chapter will be up on Halloween and will conclude this fic! Cannot believe how fast this one has been going.  
> That said thank you very much, as always, for reading. PLEASE leave me a comment! And have a wonderful day!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOO check out this incredible piece of work inspired by this fic done by doppelgaangster on tumblr: https://doppelgaangster.tumblr.com/post/629935357101801472/gravestones-chapter-1-eightpoundsofhair

Over the course of the next few months Lapis still found herself in the clear from attacks. Fall turned into winter and as the seasons changed so, too, did her life. 

The next few of their meetings went very similarly to their last. Lapis found herself crawling back to the cemetery, even when she had reassured herself for days on end that she wouldn’t. Peridot would be surprised to see her, gentle and soft spoken in her words. They would falter through unbearable conversation, sitting on the brink of genuine discussion, on the cusp of what Lapis wanted, but not yet there. Awkward and uneasy, stiff and disappointing.

Still, even when Lapis always left in a huff, frustrated and startled and sure Peridot was up to something, she kept coming back. Over and over again at Peridot’s continued invitation, always there, at the end of each meeting. They always sat uneasily, her asking Lapis to return soon if she liked, uttered as their meeting was coming to a close, Lapis visibly frustrated at Peridot who clearly withheld the whole truth. They always came off unsettling, tense, but even still, Peridot always sighed them out all the same. And even when Lapis always left feeling jittery, adrenaline finally catching back up to her when she realized how insane she was being, telling herself she would be smarter next time, drop this once and for all, angry at Peridot for being so vague, so visibly attempting to trick her, she always took up the offer. She always went back. 

No matter how much she tried; how many days she spent arguing with herself, no matter how angry or scared or convicted of staying away she was, she always found herself wandering the cemetery’s way when she didn’t keep her guard up. Always found herself heading to her when she was just a bit off center. It was uneasy, it was scary, felt like she was being possessed, but most of the time the feeling was quickly forced away; outshone by a sudden, intense excitement at the idea of visiting again. 

Still, Lapis didn’t visit often, spent enough time away each time for the interest to fester all over again, to grow and nag at her until she let herself continue where her feet inevitably led her, where she was desperate to be, and perhaps it was the length between each meeting which left Peridot always so surprised to see her.

It seemed every time Lapis ended up back at her grave, sauntering into the graveyard, she was startled. Always a bit taken off guard by her presence, always a bit stunned, excited, when she first caught sight of Lapis. It always made Lapis feel a bit better to see her so unexpecting of her, genuinely it seemed. Let her pretend that this wasn’t all some big trap or that, at the very least, Peridot wasn’t ready yet to kill her this time. 

And even when it always inevitably went the same way, barely altering at all from one time to the next, Lapis found herself relaxing into the new normal a bit. 

As much as she found herself frustrated with how things went, with Peridot’s inability to speak coherently, refusal to let Lapis ask her questions, she always held a cooler air to her than she had before. She never looked at her in that old wicked way. Never tired to trick her into death traps, never even touched her. And the more time Lapis spent sitting at the foot of her grave, mindlessly talking, desperately prodding, the more eased she felt. 

Especially when Peridot finally began to let little details slip. It was nothing much, fragmented statements of what her life had been like when Lapis explicitly asked, mostly incoherent and useless, but it was enough for her frustration to shift into untamed excitement.

In the face of those few and far between, meaningless and vague, half baked attempts at anecdotes Lapis’s intensity grew, her obsession returned, and soon she found herself telling her own stories. She spoke madly, of school and her old roommates and work and her favorite foods and everything else she could think of in an attempt to get something deeper from Peridot in return. And while it usually didn’t work slowly Peridot began to humorou her and, slowly too, Lapis got more and more out of her. Brief blips about boarding school, her father’s estate, her intense love of rice. Lapis found, in tandem, that Peridot loved to hear about her writing, even if she had been doing very little of that recently, and her interest in literature. A passion she too declared to have, although when asked she claimed she could hardly remember the titles of her old favorites. Lapis always groaned at her but decided to let it slide because slowly but surely their conversations were turning entirely cool, fun even, and as such, even when she belittled herself for it, slowly, Lapis let her guard down entirely. And while she beat herself up for it, as she found herself slipping they fell into an odd sort of friendship. 

It was still uneasy. Still shaky and littered with nerves and blocked by Peridot’s lying but it was a start. Lapis would be damned if she couldn’t turn it all the way around. 

**

Peridot didn’t know how she kept messing this up. 

Each time Lapis came she ensured herself that she had to confess this time. Explain the situation in full. Elaborate in as much detail as she could muster. It was clear Lapis was waiting for it, clear that while they were growing into a muddied sort of half friendship they weren’t close, were still tense, and Peridot was sure it would be the only way to make things right. And each time Lapis had arrived she had started to say it, had it on the tip of her tongue, just in front of her, but each time she found herself stopped by fear. Each time the words failed as they reached her mouth and never left. Each time she gave up before she had really tried. 

She always felt terrible about herself afterwards, weak and stupid, and she often grew frantic that Lapis’s consistently sudden departures, clear frustration in the unease of their conversations, were sign she had lost her last chance for good. 

But she couldn’t help it. Each time she tried, genuinely tried, to force it out a hot well of shame burned in her stomach. An unbearable sense of guilt. All of the terrible, disheartening emotions she had been feeling for ages now pooling in her stomach at once. It would be impossible to admit. After all she had been taught, after having tried to hide it for so long, after so long spent ignoring it, mistaking such an important distinction, she would never be able to find a way to get it out, would never find the words she needed, the courage to deliver them. 

Still, even when it seemed more than impossible, she knew she would have to do it if she were ever to make things right. So, when Lapis appeared from over the top of the hill, bundled in a heavy coat which left her rounded and slightly unsteady in her step, so similar to how _she_ had dressed in the winter all those years ago, bundled in a hundred layers, her mother always afraid of her catching a cold, she decided she would tell her this time. She would. 

Still, she bit her lip when Lapis first approached her, her cheeks flushed as she smiled. She would get there, it wasn’t exactly an easy thing to start a conversation with. At least Lapis didn’t seem to notice her nerves as she approached. 

“Hello,” she smiled, waving a gloved hand at her as she settled herself down in the snow.

“Hi,” Peridot replied back, worry rattling her voice even when she tried to prevent it from doing so. It drew Lapis’s eyes up from where she had been fiddling with her coat and she laughed breathily, raising an eyebrow all the while. 

So long for waiting for a better moment. 

“Are you okay?” Lapis asked, voice strained and high as she eyed Peridot nervously. 

Peridot swallowed, anxiety suddenly burning hotly in her chest, growing consuming in a split second. The feeling was the same as what had always arisen before, a sudden, starch descent into dread, but this time she couldn’t hide from it. Lapis could tell something was wrong. Had been growing increasingly frustrated with time. She was waiting. Had been waiting. This was it.

Peridot tried to push back her nervous tears, the nausea settling in her stomach. She could do it, even if she doubted it. She had to.

“Yes,” she forced, the word coming out wavering and audibly distressed despite her attempts to stay calm, “I just,”

She found the words cutting off stark before she could even fill their subsequent spaces, terror filling her chest in a flooded rush. It was worse than it ever had been before, encompassing and heavy, leaving her completely cut off, silent and frozen stiff in place. She imagined it was how close she had been to speaking, had words she was afraid of speaking sitting so close to the front of her mouth, so close to release for another to hear, and it was terrifying. She shut her lips tightly, worried of what would come out. Shut her eyes too, for good measure. 

She had thought she would be ready. Thought that, while it was something she couldn’t stop thinking of as embarrassing, something which left her buried in guilt, it was something important enough, meaningful enough, that she could push past it. Could get it out and use it to convince her of her genuine remorse, her strong desire to fix her miserable mistakes. But the feeling welled up so suddenly in her chest that she found herself collapsing into that old pit of misery. 

She was disgusting. 

She had always known it. Even before her she had always had some inkling little feeling that she was wrong, fundamentally different from her peers, and the confirmation had hardly made her feel any better. Even with her it had bittered how amazing it felt. Left an icky feeling in her chest, in her bones. 

She was disgusting. She had always known that much. But she was evil too. 

Confessing would not only mean relaying her perversion but expose how terrible she was at even being truthful to that. What would Lapis think when she told her? What a fool she would look like when she told her about the love between her and her great grandmother, something which had obviously been overlooked for sake of her ill-astute desire to attack and maim and terrorize. It would only prove that what they had had been wrong. Something which inspired insanity and delusion and aggression. 

Maybe she shouldn’t tell Lapis. Maybe it would be better for her not to know, even if she got fed up and left for good. At least then she wouldn’t think that of her. At least then Peridot wouldn’t have to try to explain the messy story that it was. 

Peridot felt herself growing woozy, like she could fade out of existence at any moment, but suddenly she spoke up, snapping Peridot out of her daze. The soft gentle voice she knew so well. 

“Peridot?”

It took Peridot opening her eyes to remember it was Lapis. It stung, badly, at first, to see Lapis when she was expecting her, but Peridot shook off the feeling, glad at least for the distraction. 

Still when Lapis spoke again, her eyebrows raised so softly, her voice lowered to be so gentle, she found the sadness doubling all over again. The resemblance really was uncanny, “Are you okay?”

Peridot tried to nod. Tried to reassure Lapis, herself, that it was true. But in the end she only found herself starting to cry, guilt and longing building up more than she could bear all at once. 

She suppressed a sob, embarrassed, and stuttered her way through a broken sentence, “I’m sorry,”

Lapis sat still, tense as Peridot tried to hide her upset, burry her face in her sleeves so she couldn’t see her crying, breathing heavily as she watched. Peridot felt hot embarrassment rising in her chest but before much more time could pass Lapis rose to her knees, speaking gently. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, timidly, as she approached Peridot. She reached a hand out for her, Peridot could feel as it passed straight through her, but the attempt was reassuring all the same. Somehow, for some reason, Lapis was trying to comfort her. 

Peridot swallowed back her tears, feeling stupid and mad at herself for falling privy to such useless outpourings of emotion, and steadied her breath. She breathed and decided to let her guilt guide her, part of it anyways; her resolve to fix things. She could do it. She could speak. Besides, Lapis’s sweet natured attempts to help her, even after everything, was kind enough that she wanted to. If not for any other reason than to try, genuinely, to get her apology across. 

“I haven’t been truthful with you,” she eventually spoke, firm yet quiet as she finally rose her eyes to meet Lapis’s. 

The result was instantaneous and Peridot shouldn’t have been surprised. 

Lapis jumped back, removing her presence from her’s quickly with a hot, panicked look in her eyes. 

“What?” she forced out, the word unnerved and loud as she started to her feet. 

Peridot felt a sudden wave of anxiety overcome her and, stupidly, she rushed forwards. 

“No,” she spoke, her voice strained when Lapis hopped a bit further back, “Not about this. I swear,”

Lapis didn’t look reassured. She started to stand a bit higher on her feet, took a tentative first step backwards. 

Peridot had to force herself to still, feeling compelled to rush and grab her when the sudden surge of panic overcame her. She didn’t want to have to start over. Was more sure with each passing visit that Lapis was losing interest, was growing frustrated with her. If she did this, accidentally scared her, she worried she wouldn’t have another chance. She had to do it. Calmly. Now. 

“I know why you can see me,”

Lapis stalled in her tracks at once, turning back from where she had just started to leave. Her eyes were wide, engaged and interested, and her body was tense.

“Yeah?” she asked, looking across at Peridot with a serious look on her face. 

Peridot swallowed, ready to cry all over again. Still, she bit down the feeling, necessity, panic, guilt, everything she had been feeling recently, compelling her to continue.

Still, it didn’t make it easy. The confidence fizzled out almost as fast as she could open her mouth. 

“I’ve been ashamed to tell you,” was all she could manage for the moment. Overwhelmed and nervous and feeling as if she could be sick. 

She wasn’t ready to talk about it. She didn’t know how she would ever be able to. 

For all of her life, all of her death, she had been so ashamed. Had felt so disgusted of herself and her inability to quell the feelings, bitter at her total and complete love for her. Even when she had been with her, so happy she felt as if she was floating, like the world was good and would always be good, it was always nagging in the back of her mind. Often made her upset. Often muddied their conversations and left them _both_ feeling angry and upset and wrong. 

She had been the only person Peridot ever talked to about it and even then, even when she, very obviously, was well aware it was still hard. It was miserable, now, more than that had ever been, knowing she had to say it to an outsider. To someone who didn’t know them and was uninvolved. It was distressing. Terrifying. 

But Peridot owed it to her. She tried to remind herself of it, tried to catch her confidence back, chasing it down her throat as it hid from her, as she cleared her throat, catching Lapis’s eye, “I’m sorry. I’m overwhelmed,”

Lapis laughed nervously, looking around at her surroundings, “It’s okay,”

Peridot sighed, a weighted feeling in her chest, “It’s not. I should have told you,”

Lapis started at her uneasily, a restless, anxious look on her face. It hinted that she might run again, that her patience was running thin, and Peridot hated it. She needed more time. She didn’t want to. She was afraid. Ashamed. Ill with guilt. But she owed it to her. 

She swallowed down the sick as best she could; vowing to rip off the bandage and get it over with. Speak before Lapis ran. In the end her words came out surprisingly sound, solid and certain in the air in front of her, if fueled with pressure. Peridot felt slightly woozy to hear them allowed.

“I believe you are the descendant of someone I used to know,”

At the very least it achieved what she wanted, that impatient little shine of annoyance in Lapis’s eye, the quip of her lip, the slight raising of her eyebrow all vanished in a flash, her face instead lightening up. With wide eyes Lapis responded, her words high and fast. 

“Really?” She asked, balling her fists, and leaning forwards to look at Peridot better. A mad little gleam caught her eye, vivaciously excited, and the sight, so overblown and big, eased some of the tension in Peridot’s chest, “Who?”

Although that brought her back. All at once she grew frustrated, anxious all over again. She had only interested her and while that was good, had been necessary, she had hardly done the hard part. Had done no more than set herself up for an immediate need to get it out. An instant necessity to tell her what she had been too afraid to even tell herself for a hundred years.

Still, she didn’t want to lose that interest in Lapis’s eyes. Didn’t want to annoy her by catching her interest and then failing to deliver. Hot panic welled in her chest at the thought and she found herself fumbling into unprepared and unexpected words at once. 

“I,” she stuttered, franticity driving her mouth even when she had no plans, no idea how she would go about saying what she knew she must, “A lifelong friend of mine,” she fumbled to say, the panicked rush of her words catching up with her, leaving her all the more anxious somehow, “We met in grade school. She lived across the street from me. We used to sit in her garden and read,” she felt anecdotes welling on her lips, a thousand stories to tell, a million things to say, all with her looking at her like that, like her, and she rushed to say more, panic driving her and blinding her from the fact that she hadn’t actually cleared anything up. She took a gasping breath but Lapis stepped over her. 

“I,” she muttered, confusion heavy on her voice, “Was that all?” Her words were soft, even through the vague disappointment, bewildered confusion, and the tone was what finally brought Peridot back to reality. 

“No,” she muttered softly, defeat sitting present in her words already at the sound, so clearly muddied with emotion. It was impossible to stop dread’s increased stronghold on her. 

She didn’t know how to say it. Couldn’t even begin to know how she would go about starting and she, again, thought of giving up. But as she looked up at Lapis, disheartened and waiting, she changed her mind. She had to try, she would try, even if she did so desperately; grabbing at the first words she could place in her mind. 

“She was,” she started, confidence quickly fizzling out as she heard her own voice, bringing with them a wave of heavy nausea which left her momentarily silent, “We were,”

She felt frazzled. A thousand different approaches sat on her tongue, all too scary, too straightforward, or too confusing, too vague, too useless. Nothing sounded right and the more she pushed, starting only to fumble to a stop, the more dizzied and bad her response became. 

She sighed, tears welling behind her eyes in frustration, panic. She tried to push them back, wanted nothing more than to keep her composure, but found herself whimpering anyways. 

Lapis tenantry leaned forwards, Peridot looked up at her. 

“Did she kill you?” Lapis asked in a whisper, worry ridden on her face.

It was so unexpected that Peridot woke from her panic, found herself responding, in an instant, “What?” she yelped, “No!”

Lapis leaned back at the noise a startled, if slightly amused look on her face. Peridot blushed, realizing just how sudden her mood had changed but Lapis spoke before she could cover her intensity. 

“I just thought if you hated me so much,” she spoke, drawing out her words with forced curiosity, pointed questioning, all spoken with a raised eyebrow. It was not something Peridot was totally unused to by then, Lapis had spent a great deal of their relationship prodding her for information, but it was the most blunt she had been in a long while. Peridot had to fight the urge to deny, a panicked ‘no’ already sitting on her lips. With forced intensity she reminded herself that she was trying to tell her. She guessed that meant all of it. 

She sighed, “I suppose I did briefly think that,”

Lapis’s eyes light up and she balled her fists, “Who?” she demanded, her words hot and excited. 

Peridot leaned back, “Who?” she echoed. 

Lapis huffed, “Someone _did_ kill you,” she spoke lowly, waving a hand in front of her face, “Who you thought I was related to. So,” she drew out the word, raising an eyebrow at Peridot all the while, “Who was it?”

Peridot swallowed, a sudden pool of unrest arriving in her stomach, the incessant urge to push back, deny, refuse to speak returning again. She didn’t want to have to explain it, think about it, him, but she forced the feeling back again. As much as she hated him, all that had happened, _this_ was the easy part, she could do it. 

“My husband,” she spoke, the words slow and acutely enunciated as she forced them out, “He was the one who killed me,”

She watched as Lapis’s excitement, the spark in her eye, the excited balling of her fists faded. Her eyes grew dimmer and her half smile faded away. Instead she looked into Peridot’s eyes with a lowered brow. 

“I,” she started, the word uneasy and tense on her lips, “I shouldn’t have prodded. I’m,”

But she stopped herself, bringing a hand to her mouth as she looked with pitiful eyes at Peridot. Peridot didn’t like the sadness in her expression, didn’t like being the recipient of her pity, didn’t like talking about this, but she tried to soothe the sudden surge of anger which began welling in her chest. But it was instinctual, engraved within her at having to talk about this, think about him, so even when she told herself that Lapis wasn’t pitying her, just responding to something horrible which had happened, that it wasn’t Lapis’s fault that he had done this to her, she still found herself letting out a hard, “It’s fine,” as her response. 

Lapis shook his head, though, distress still written all over her face, seemingly unaware of the bitterness of Peridot’s voice, “He,” she started before cutting herself off again, raising a hand to her mouth and looking again towards Peridot was a sad, upset look in her eye. 

“Was not a good man,” Peridot finished for her, letting the anger of being pitied, the anger of a hundred years of stewing in what had happened, fuel her words.

She really did hate him. It was funny to think about now, with so much else on her mind she hadn’t thought about him at all in ages. She decided she didn’t like how familiar the burn of rage felt licking her insides.

“Oh my god,” Lapis intelligently replied. 

Peridot simply nodded, watching as Lapis’s eyes unfocused and she sat in reflection. She sat tense for a long pause, eyes blurry and unfocused, serious, and Peridot frowned at her. She tried to think of a way to veer the conversion off of this, him, but before she could Lapis’s eyes focused again and she turned to look back at Peridot. 

“But I’m not?” she asked tentatively, her words gentle, nearly whispered with hesitant curiosity. 

Peridot frowned, their wandering back into the topic at hand leaving her satisfied even when she suddenly recalled what the on-topic conversation would entail. The same old anxiety pooling into her veins at the realization but even when it bubbled in her chest, compressing against her lungs and pushing down on her stomach, she found her words with relative ease.

“I realized a little bit ago. I should have known right away,”

Lapis straightened up a bit at that, “Really?”

Peridot smiled gently despite herself, “You bear a rather transparent resemblance to someone else,” 

A lighter silence floated between them. A brief pause where Peridot’s anxiety was less, the old comfort of _her_ fresh on her mind. And when Lapis spoke the feeling carried over, intensified by the familiarity of her voice. 

“Well,” Lapis started, an expectant yet innocent air of questioning high on her voice, “Who was it?”

Right. 

“I,” Peridot started, the anxiety welling up again all at once as the false comfort bubbled over, evaporated away in lieu of that terrible question. Burning and hotter than it had been all night, intense when Lapis’s eyes were on her, waiting. All encompassing when she knew she couldn’t delay it any longer. It left her dizzy, nauseous.

Still, an odd sense of want overcame her too. While masked slightly by the fear, not nearly as obvious as that large and demanding emotion, it bubbled under the surface. Left her tentatively ready to speak. And somehow, despite all she anticipated, she found the words, “I was in love with her,”

Still. The fear made the subsequent silence hard. A blind sense of panic raided her mind, left her suddenly doubting her choosing to tell her. Left her doubting her own emotions. Left her filled with dread. Left her wishing she was properly dead. 

Although the feeling proved to be short lived. Lapis responded in a moment, a sudden jump of her eyebrows just barely predeceasing her speech. 

Although it was decidedly less than Peridot had wanted. “Oh,” was all she said and Peridot quickly felt her brief pull from terror failing. Instead that short, surprised, reaction left her feeling like she very well could throw up, something she would have sworn she could no longer do, on the brink of tears. 

“Indeed,” Peridot forced herself to reply all the same, the word broken and nervous. 

Silence accompanied them for another moment, heavy and miserable and leaving Peridot more and more upset. She tried to work up her courage to leave, to hide her face forever or at least find a way to disappear, but felt as if she was frozen. Locked right to the couch, paralyzed in panic, misery. She could do nothing but wait for Lapis to speak once more.

“And you think I’m?” she did eventually ask of Peridot, leaving the end of the question off. She turned to look at Peridot, an innocent expression resting on her face. Gentle, unthreatening. It made Peridot’s heart flutter, eased some of her worries about Lapis’s thoughts, and she found herself blinking away some of her tears. 

“Related to her?” Peridot sighed, “Yes,”

“Are you sure?”

Peridot laughed despite herself, the sound coming out sad and defeated, “I’ve never been so positive of something before,” she sighed again, “You look just like her,”

Lapis said nothing, simply stared. Shame burned in Peridot’s chest again, embarrassment and upset filling her body but she found that, suddenly, she couldn’t stop herself from continuing talking. It was as if she had flipped a switch, where before talking was impossible now it was impossible to quell, “She was a writer too,” she found herself quickly saying, desperate to fill the empty space of the silence, “She wrote that book you were reading a few months ago, Camp Pining Hearts. I always loved that story. She must have gotten a punisher after I last saw her,”

Although when she found herself hitting that wall, the end of a short little tangent, she found her lips glued tightly shut all over again; sudden embarrassment overpowering her words. Another silence perimiated, punctuated by Peridot’s feeling like she would cry, explode, while Lapis scanned her face. They locked eyes and Lapis sighed, a gentle, kind smile on her face.

“I don’t know what to say,” she spoke softly, her words sweet, sincere, across from Peridot. 

Peridot laughed, the sound coming out sadder than she knew possible, “I know it must be unnerving,”

Lapis shook her head, drawing Peridot’s eyes up and reaching for her hand. She took it with gentle sincerity, although the sensation was muddied by her being unable to truly grab at it, and she smiled. Somehow that brought more tears to Peridot’s eyes than her shame. 

“I think it’s sweet,”

Peridot’s insides lit a bit, the bitter, sad shame fading away just enough for that old sunshine to shine through. She sounded _just_ like her, “You do?”

Lapis smiled, gentle and kind with a hint of a curling of her nose. The way it shone in her eyes, brought small wrinkles to the corners of them, made Peridot’s heart beat fast. It was an expression she had missed dearly, “Yeah,”

Peridot found herself smiling back, happiness welling all at once. Leaving her teary all over again, “I’m glad,”

“Besides,” Lapis laughed, loud and sudden, “I suppose you’re pretty cute, too,”

**

Well it certainly wasn’t what Lapis had been expecting. She still wasn’t sure how to feel about it. 

In the moment, when Peridot had been speaking, it had been easy to trust her and she had done so wholeheartedly. The way she spoke, so wistful and sad with a gentle, gleaming light in her eye, had felt so real that Lapis hadn’t the heart to question her. Hadn’t any thought to do so in the first place. Instead it had seemed to make sense, clicking together when Lapis thought back on the oddity of it all, her inability to leave, her ability to see her, everything. Overwhelmed with feeling and excited at being told anything at all she had trusted her. Had let herself babble stupid little sentences she assured herself she didn’t mean.

Had let herself be fooled for the hundredth time in a row. 

After Lapis had left, had entered back in the house, the blurred vision had cleared. At once she came to the same quick conclusion she had come to time and time again; Peridot was lying to her. Had strung together some long, romanticized story for her to get her to fall into her trap, into her unquestioning trust. _This_ was the end goal of her new and absurd course of action. And so far it was working perfectly. 

And even when Lapis sat with it for a bit longer, thought over the conversation repeatedly, and couldn’t recall any hint of a lie in her voice, she still found herself growing quickly less charmed by the tale. 

At first it made her feel uncomfortable, icky. This ghost, the one who had been terrorizing her for months on end, had left her debilitated and panic ridden and miserable, had been in love with her great grandmother. The one who supposedly looked just like Lapis did. Which could only imply-

It made her angry. Why should Peridot attack her if that was how she apparently felt towards her likeness, her past? Why should she try, in genuine cold blood, to murder her when Lapis had been a reflection of a past happiness? Why did she have to get caught up in her great grandmother’s long lost romance? Her failed love life? It was none of Lapis’s business and when Peridot was out of her sight, when she had sat and reflected, she found anger growing steadily within her. 

But the feeling, while coming on again and again, never stayed around for long. Would always fizz and fade away in a quick moment when she sighed, leaning back in her seat or rocking back on her heels, running a hand through her hair. As much as it was weird and frustrating and distributing and angering it made perfect sense. 

It really had explained it all; why she could see her, why Peridot had enthralled her so, why she felt bound to her, the house, totally unable to be pulled away. Because, if this was true, she was connected, even if it only by way of a long gone grandparent. 

So, while Lapis found herself cycling through waves of emotions she eventually found her thoughts settling. She supposed she believed her. She supposed it was exciting. She was destined, it seemed, to find a ghost, a real one, and help her. She was destined to help a grief stricken, wronged soul. And when she thought of it like that it really _was_ exciting, Lapis couldn’t have imagined a better life path for herself, but even with the anger and disgust gone her excitement, too, usually didn’t last. Instead it always came back to the same crushing roadblock. She was excited sure, was meant to help certainly, but she had no idea how to do so. Because, when she thought about it, she felt like everything should have already been resolved. 

Peridot had let herself sit with things, had found Lapis, confided in her. Shouldn’t her issues be resolved? Shouldn’t she be appeased? What else could she possibly want?

Lapis shook her head. She wouldn’t worry about it now, she shouldn’t. 

She went back to the cemetery instead. 

Peridot had been waiting for her this time it seemed. While she had been sat, legs crossed and head bowed as she played with the dirt below her, unnoticing at first, when Lapis’s footsteps grew within earshot she peered up, a relieved look on her face.

“Lapis,” she muttered wispily, rising to her feet as she did. 

“Hi,” Lapis fumbled, fear insiticivly rising in her chest at the sight of her rising, the knowing look in her eye.

Peridot smiled at her uneasily, “I was worried you wouldn’t come back,”

Lapis smiled herself, the expression awkward and forced on her face even when the tension slowly began to ease from her chest, “I was worried you’d be long gone,”

Peridot rose an eyebrow at her, squinting her eyes in confusion, “You were?”

Lapis nodded at her, settling herself down in the grass across from her gravestone, “Appeased or something. I guess not,”

Peridot frowned at her, her expression solidifying in an instant, “I guess not,” she echoed lowly.

Lapis paused, searched her face after she had finished. The harshness in her words was unexpected but not startling; as Peridot avoided her eyes, looked down at the grass near her feet Lapis could feel the sadness, frustration radiating off of her. Defeated and tense she tensed her hands only to release them a moment later. Lapis followed her as she scanned her eyes along the dirt, that bubbling little emotion so visible on her eye. Clearly Peridot had been hoping for something like that too. 

It made Lapis all the more confused. Surely if Peridot thought that this would bring her closure it should have, right? Why hadn’t it?

Still, Lapis shook off the feeling, voting instead to try to talk Peridot away from this. She felt bad having her upset, clearly having brought up something she was already disheveled about, and wanted to soothe the unease. If not to comfort then at least to save herself from ultimate harm, worrying Peridot might grow mad if Lapis kept her busied in her upset. 

It didn’t come out how she meant it to, though. Instead the words fell and fumbled out, stumbled and rushed and loud and fully unrelated to all else. 

“Thank you for telling me,” she uttered, drawing Peridot’s eyes out from their daze to lock with Lapis’s. Her brow furrowed as she caught sight of them and Lapis’s heart beat in her throat. 

“Pardon?” Peridot asked, the soft, gentle tone of her voice easing Lapis’s worry, if instead leaving her slightly flustered. 

“For telling me,” Lapis repeated all the same however, “About her, the other day,” she continued, her words slow as she strung them together in her mind, “I wasn’t sure if I should believe you at first but I,” she found her words falling off, unsure of why she had changed her mind, realized that she certainly shouldn’t admit to that even if she was beginning to feel that way. 

Still Peridot only responded with a relaxed smirk, a low, but fully unthreatening, string of words accompanying her smile, “I’m too cute to distrust?”

Lapis felt herself jerking, eyes going wide as she heard her, and Peridot laughed across from her, a gaudy, nasally sound. Lapis felt her face warming in response and she stumbled her way through a retort as best she could, “I was just being polite when I said that!”

It was a boldfaced lie and Lapis was sure Peridot could tell but all the same she eased her laughing, slowly working her way down from the chuckles to sigh, leaning forwards onto her knees with her elbows, “I apologize,” she said, smiling down at Lapis before staring off again into the distance, “Just teasing,”

Lapis shook her head but watched as Peridot gazed off into the distance. Her eyes were swimming again, unfocused and rolling ever so slightly in circles as she thought. A subtle fall of her eyebrows, the gentle relaxing of her muscles, accompanied that searching gaze and it made Lapis’s heart calm, her blush fade. 

“What was she like?” She found herself asking Peridot, who looked at her gently, that barely visible sadness still clinging to the edges of her eyes. 

“Hm?” Peridot replied, focusing her gaze upon Lapis with a soft little frown. 

“If I’m so like her,” Lapis breathily spoke, feeling the need to approach her gently, “Tell me about her,”

Peridot sighed, a heavy feeling filling the sound, “Well, what do you want to know?”

Lapis hummed, searching for something, not sure what in particular to ask when she was simply curious about it all, simply trying to get her to speak, but eventually she recalled something Peridot had said and found a soft, if somewhat accelerated question coming, “You said she was a writer?”

Peridot smiled at Lapis, a gentle and peaceful little gaze, “She always was,” she sighed, “I remember on the first day we met she showed me some book she had been working on, about dragons and a teenaged girl,” she paused briefly, her gaze floating away and her words falling off before she picked back up again, her eyes turning quick to catch Lapis’s, “She was good, too. It was nice to see that book the other day. She must have finally gotten published,”

Lapis found herself staring, a heavy feeling sat unavoidable in her chest while Peridot continued to stare into the distance, a heavy look on her face. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what to think, but when Peridot spoke no longer she tried. She felt like she had to. 

“You seem like you miss her,” she said timidly, searching Peridot’s face for a reaction, one she hoped would be pleasant. Yet as Lapis spoke the soft, subtle sadness she held shifted, falling after only a moment into a twitch of a genuine frown. 

“I do,” she spoke, still avoiding Lapis’s eyes, her voice blunt and bitter.

It made Lapis’s insides twist to hear, her heart beat and her stomach churn. She tried frantically to think of something else to say, something to ease the terrible tensions she had accidentally created, but before she could Peridot let out a heavy sigh. 

“I wish I could have just died and been normal,” her words were heavy, defeated. 

The sentence stilled Lapis’s heart, sudden and unexpected in the air in front of her, “Yeah?” she asked tentatively, all she could think of in response.

Peridot frowned, “Maybe then I could have been with her again,”

It stung to hear. Felt terrible and made Lapis want to be sick. 

She wished she hadn’t come back. Hadn’t tried to find her or help her or talk to her at all. She didn’t like having to deal with all of this grief, all of this sadness that she couldn’t help. 

She found herself, again, searching frantically for something to say to fix things. Some magic word which might ease Peridot’s grief or give her what she wanted. 

She gasped. 

“I know some spells, y’know,” she said suddenly, turning quickly to look at Peridot with a start. 

Peridot cocked an eyebrow, amusement briefly replacing the sadness on her features, “Spells?”

“Yeah!” Lapis replied loudly, “Just like some basic witchcraft but I’m sure I could look something up to help you,”

Peridot paused, staring bluntly for a short moment before she snorted, a heavy smile falling onto her face, “She would have loved you,” she mused, a soft, gentle sound, “I suppose it’s worth a shot,”

“Yeah?” Lapis found herself asking excitedly. 

Peridot smiled across from her, “Why not?”

**

They didn’t end up trying one that day, after all. Even when Lapis, foolishly she was sure at first, brought her home. But they did something Lapis was almost as excited about; had some real conversations. 

With Lapis’s tarot out and her folders of printed website tabs sprawled on the floor and her laptop opened to a hundred different tabs they got quickly distracted and the tension luckily lifted. 

Peridot watched over her shoulder while Lapis fanatically showed her websites, videos, something she had claimed to have never seen asides from in passing before, of spells. She smiled at her when Lapis insisted she read her cards, something she could hardly interpret and something Peridot did not understand. She laughed when Lapis showed her the printed potion recipes and incantations she had slowly been collecting for years. And, miraculously, they fell in and out of easy, interesting conversation.

It went so easily, in fact, that Lapic could hardly believe it when she suddenly caught up with herself, sat against Peridot on the couch laughing at some joke. 

It was weird and somewhat unnerving after the months of terror, the months of fear so intentionally, deliberately caused by this woman. Lapis still held a great part of herself who was afraid, terrified of Peridot. Who could not forget the maddened look in her eye when she approached her with a knife. The sadistic laugh that sat high in her throat when Lapis cowered in front of her. But even still, now, sitting across from her as she smiled so gently, so normally, unthreatening and without any of that malevolence about her, it was hard to tie that person, the evil, terrifying ghost, to this one. 

Irregardless, for a hot moment, one short second when she remembered what had happened before and got vividly scared. At once she began trying to find her way out, tried to plan her escape, sure she had fallen into some cunning plan, but Peridot caught her change in demeanor at once. The laugh she had been in the middle of fell from her lips and she frowned. 

“I’m sorry,” she muttered when Lapis locked eyes with her, startled further by the sudden change in noise, “I swear to you I am,”

She sounded desperate, her words half whined and low, pleading. Lapis wanted to believe her, wanted despite all logic to trust her and emphasize with her, but for once she found her logic won the best of her. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she muttered, her words shaking as she scooted a little left on the couch, away from Peridot and towards the front door, “I’m just,”

Peridot shook her head, cutting Lapis’s words off, already tentative and unwanted in her mouth, with the gesture. She gave Lapis a sad little smile before she stood, causing Lapis to jump before she realized that Peridot was stepping away, took a large step back into the expanse of the room, heading toward the door. 

“I understand,” was all she said as she moved to exit, “I deserve it,”

She left with nothing else, leaving Lapis feeling funny on the couch. 

**

Things continued in the same cycle for a long while after that. They kept seeking each other out, usually Lapis who found she could not stand to _not_ go looking for her again, felt she would physically burst if she didn’t try, but occasionally, too, Peridot. Already apologizing and stuttering through shaky words when Lapis opened the door, distraught and terribly guilty for approaching when she should have waited. 

They fumbled their way through conversations, most uncertain, hesitant, but slowly more and more of them exciting. Flowing easily, flowing naturally, with a sort of boldfaced disregard of all that had happened between them. Funny and bright, like that of a real friendship, and while it was weird and vaguely awkward when they caught up with themselves at first Lapis and Peridot gradually grew closer all the same. 

Peridot began talking her way through sad little stories when Lapis asked, too curious to stop herself, and Lapis through her own when she realized how much she wanted to comfort her. And as their meetings grew more common, as Lapis held less restraint in her visiting and Peridot became less worried that she was upsetting when she came to visit, the stories grew gradually more eased, gradually less prompted. 

Lapis found that she enjoyed the tenacity of Peridot, so passionate when she became distracted from the sadness and anger and fear she so usually carried with her. She found that Peridot liked _her_ tenacity when she spoke of her passions, always smiled a bit more genuinely when Lapis told her of the latest book she had read or the newest trinket she had seen at the thrift store. And the more she eased into Peridot, the more the fears and worries and constant positivity that she was being conned faded away all together, the more Peridot eased into her. 

And somehow, before she knew it, she was seeing her all the time. They worked their way through constant, easy conversations. Ones spearheaded by both of them, full of wild stories and hot, bouncing bits of dialogue. Things went smoothly, well, all without interruption. 

Mostly, anyways. 

Peridot was obsessed with apologizing. At least once a visit she would grow quiet, a pouted look sat on her cheeks, and she would break from the conversation to apologize. Some new, yet equal, string of words falling from her lips mournfully, frantically, trying to convince Lapis of just how sorry she was. 

Lapis didn’t exactly forgive her, so even when she always said it was fine, the words didn’t meet her voice. It was always painfully clear how well Peridot could tell. 

One usually quickly departed following that. 

**

Despite the occasional unrest of their relationship, the worries Lapis held, things continued to move smoothly for several months and, in the face of their miraculously growing friendship, she couldn’t believe how quickly her life had repeatedly flip flopped on itself. 

Having gone from full time student to moving away to haunted by a murderess ghost to close friends with that same spirit in as short as she had was baffling and she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it when Peridot stared over her shoulder, watching as Lapis scoured the internet for what she was looking for. 

She had already bookmarked a few tabs before, old spells she had stumbled upon, half attempted before, and a few new ones she had found in the past few days, but none of them were exactly what she wanted. Although she shouldn’t exactly be surprised; the need to _banish_ a ghost certainly was much more prevalent than the need to _appease_ one.

Even when she scoured through the most niche blogs, the most obscure corners of the occultist internet, she hadn’t found any that seemed exactly right. She couldn’t even find any stories of anything similar having happened to anyone else, at least none which seemed credible. 

And Peridot was certainly no help at her side. Quickly bored she had sighed, leaning up against the back of the couch and tossing her head back, “You mean to tell me I walked all the way here and you haven’t even picked one yet?”

It was a rhetorical question. Lapis could tell by the overblown exaggeration in her voice but she replied all the same, “Would you rather me banish you to hell?”

Peridot laughed lowly, “It’d be better than having to watch you run yourself in circles,”

Lapis stopped briefly with her scrolling, tossing a short questioning look Peridot’s way. 

Peridot sighed beside her, a mutually exaggerated sound but one muted a bit by reality, “I don’t think it’s happened before. I don’t know if it can be done,”

Lapis could hear the defeat in her voice, the underlaid sadness which creeped out when she dropped the gaudy complaints. It made her oddly anxious, upset, and she shook her head heavily, quickening the pace of her scan down the page, “We’ll find one,”

Peridot didn’t reply. Simply frowned by her side. 

Lapis stopped to look at her, “We _could_ try one of these,”

Peridot raised an eyebrow, her smirk returning, “And banish me to hell?”

“Not one of those,” Lapis insisted, standing and bringing her laptop to her kitchen table, littered with so far unlit candles, “One of the nicer ones,”

“Lapis,” Peridot sighed, getting up from the couch herself with a heavy weight to her words, “You don’t-“

“It’s worth a shot,” Lapis interjected, a heavy, anxious feeling sitting boldly in her chest. 

**

In the end it didn’t work, Lapis hadn’t exactly expected to, and while the realization made her want to cry, defeat leaving her briefly desolate and embarrassed, Peridot’s soft little response pulled her forward. 

“It’s okay,” she had said, her words gentle and low, comforting, “We’ll try another one some other time,”

“What if that one doesn’t work either?” Lapis asked, a weighty sat heavy in her chest.

Peridot smiled, “It’s not like we have a time limit. For now I just want to beat you at chess again,”

**

They tried a lot more spells on a lot more evenings and while none of them worked Lapis somehow grew less upset with each try. 

She felt like she was getting close, Peridot joked that she could feel it too, fuzzy feet and the flavor of cardamom, and with each ended enchantment, each finished ritual, all with Peridot’s eyes still bold and there, she became reinvigorated to try again. 

Peridot never let them do more than one a day, claimed it ‘took it out of her’, although Lapis doubted that, but she supposed in the end she didn’t mind that either. Whether Peridot would end up cuddled against her side, poking fun of her as she looked for the next best spell, or, occasionally, laughing at whatever dumb video Lapis thought she might enjoy, or whether she was tossing taunts at her from across a board of chess or, recently, monopoly, she didn’t mind. Instead she found that the more she failed the more she was relieved. Because the more she failed the closer she grew to Peridot. And the closer she grew to her the less she liked the idea of her leaving her life.

Although Peridot’s occasional commenting on it, on what had caused this, always made her feel guilty of that fact. That stark pause in her laughing always making Lapis’s face quickly fall, guilt budding in her chest, knowing exactly what was coming. The glassy, wistful look in her eye just barely predeceasing the declaration of how pretty she was, how similar, unavoidable and crushing each time. Especially because it would always present suddenly what Lapis had been trying to avoid for a while. 

She wasn’t sure if she liked her like that. She didn’t want to, felt like it was wrong on several fundamental levels, and Peridot surely wasn’t her type. But she certainly _felt_ it. 

She thought often, when Peridot was out of sight and she was left to reflect, that it was the same thing that kept her tied to the house. What had drawn her to see her in the first place. What now left her so captivated by her every move. Overblown emotions from her ancestor, Peridot’s lover. Feelings left over from _her_ life and dropped onto Lapis’s lap now. Drawing her to Peridot. Leaving her _feeling_ about her. 

But even when she assured herself that that was all it was it was so large, so consumptive, that she couldn’t help but question it. 

It hurt. 

She _missed_ her. That was the most obvious one; that old, longing, feeling was so profound even when Lapis was with her. It left her feeling a thousand miles away from her even when she was sat just across the kitchen. Left her feeling like she could never reach her no matter how fast she ran. 

She loved her. So much it left her sick to her stomach. Enamored by her laugh and entranced by her eyes and fully encapsulated by her presence.

And she supposed what hurt most was that she knew that even when she felt them the feelings weren’t hers. That, while she knew well they were reciprocated, they weren’t reciprocated for _her_. 

She wondered if Peridot knew. Wondered if she could tell that across the room from her that Lapis’s ancestor was pulling things out through her. Leading her through such unavoidable, bold feelings, feeling them with her, whenever it was she currently was. 

She tried to tell herself it was charming, getting to feel all that love that she had felt for Peridot before, all the love that was still sent her way. Instead all she could do was feel jealous.

The guilt she felt when she realized that always made working on helping her a bit easier, made her desire to help her, reunite them, all the stronger. Although usually when she slowed down and eased back into the work, back into Peridot and her never ending complaints, never ending stories, the motivation often faded. Because as much as she wanted to reunite them she also couldn’t help but hurt knowing she was trying to help her be out of her life.

She loved Peridot. A lot. Even when she wasn’t sure if the feeling was hers. She didn’t want her to go. 

Still, she bottled up the feelings. Setting them aside because deep down she knew she was right. They weren’t hers. 

And maybe she did like Peridot a little, maybe some of it was hers after all, but she’d use that admiration to help her get what she wanted. To help her be happy once again. She did want _that_ after all. Even if she knew it would sting to have her gone. 

**

The spell that eventually worked started as an amalgam of at least ten other spells plus a few new additions from Lapis. 

It had taken weeks to write, constant tweaking of nuances while Peridot laughed, asking why they couldn’t at least try this draft first before she moved onto the next one. But even through the snail-like pace, the humming and hah-ing over every word on the page, even through Peridot sticking her nose in the way, making fun of the word choice here or the pacing here, they were nice weeks. 

Her and Peridot had grown all the closer still. By then Lapis was no longer even hesitant to say that they were real friends with how obvious it felt as they sat side by side, working on the spell. All the hours Lapis had spent with Peridot, her leaning over her shoulder and coddling her for the tiniest changes in words she made, or shouting at her from across the living room floor, cross legged and far too excited about the story Lapis had shared about her day at work, had left her feeling all the more attached to her. Less and less in that old way, the profound, bigger than herself emotions which drew her irreparably back. More in a real way. Like real friends.

She was funny, Lapis found herself captivated by the way in which she moved through her words and emotions, loud and bold and bright. Nothing ever subdued, for better or for worse. Nothing ever left unannounced. She was charming, cunning and fast on her feet when she needed to be. Quick to send jabs Lapis’s way, quick to pick up on any shift in her expression. She was vivaciously interesting. A real ghost, never alive in this century, who, while having been somewhat present since her death, was confounded by technology. Still occasionally talked with old euphemisms and words Lapis had only ever read before. 

She was cute. Although Lapis still wasn’t sure if that was her own thought or not. She tried not to think too much on that one. Instead only remind herself of the happy fact; they were friends. 

Of course their relationship, smoothed over now, helped; made their working on the spell fun and left Lapis motivated, wanting to help her friend, although certainly did not accelerate anything. Instead Peridot had learned how to distract her, led her always into an unproductive end of a boisterous conversation. And even when Lapis tried to be annoyed about it she never was. It always brought her closer to her. And maybe, maybe, she was always a bit grateful because she didn’t want to work at all. 

Their friendship, the fun they had had, the connection shared, left a bittersweet sadness burning in Lapis’s chest each time they moved forwards. She wanted it to work, wanted to get the spell right, wanted to help Peridot so she could be back home, happy for the first time in a hundred years, but as much as she wanted that it hurt all the more. She didn’t want to have to say goodbye.

So maybe she was dragging her feet just a little. Letting Peridot distract her. Letting herself get lost in useless prose already well adjusted. She always got back on track, eventually. Always eventually got settled back into work.

Because she _did_ want to help her. She did. 

Still, even with all the absurd detail work she had done, needless nitpicking performed, partially for sake of stalling, partially in truthful attempts to better it, when the day came Lapis still hadn’t been completely sure if it was ready.

Even still, even when Lapis didn’t feel ready, could isolate at least three lines she still wasn’t sure on, she had decided long ago that she would have to try it then. A full moon on a clear, cool evening. Stars shining bright over head. No bitter sting of winter hanging in the air. If any time was going to help it work it was then. Besides, she told herself, the stalling was getting a little ridiculous.

She sighed, pulling herself from her thoughts when she had finally prepared herself, and nodded at Peridot from across the table, grabbing her laptop in worried hands and leading her outside. 

In the moonlight Peridot’s skin shone all the prettier a shade of silver, like the moonlight itself. Sparkling and gleaming along the beams of light, dancing in pretty little circles about her skin as Peridot nervously smiled at her, a pretty enough sight on its own, and a little pang of sadness crossed the worried tension in Lapis’s chest. 

She pushed on, shaking off the emotion at once, pulling her eyes from Peridot, to instead settle her in the garden, surrounding her in a circle of quartz and candles. 

Peridot looked up at her, smiling nervously across the way, and Lapis returned the look, trying desperately not to cry, the burning sadness suddenly overwhelming. She opened her mouth to speak, desperate to rip the bandaid off, but Peridot interrupted her before she could. 

“Wait,” she had spoken suddenly as she stepped out of the circle.

Lapis looked up, a conflicting mix of frustration and relief filling her, “Are you okay?”

“I just,” Peridot had stuttered, seeming frazzled, dazed. She breathed heavily and took Lapis’s hands, a feeling which never failed to catch her off guard no matter how many times she experienced it. Fuzzy and light. Cold. She would have patchy skin the next day, little irritated marks where she had been touched, but she decided, as Peridot stared at her, looking nearly flushed through the silvery light of the moon overhead, that she didn’t mind, “I just don’t know what will happen if it works and I,” Peridot fumbled, avoiding Lapis’s gaze as she searched for the words, “I wanted to speak with you,”

Lapis’s chest squeezed with tension, worry and unease riding in her chest even when she tried desperately to quell it. She waited, unsure what she could say now that would not come out sappy and dramatic, but nothing more came. Peridot continued to avoid her eyes and Lapis searched her face for answers, meeting nothing but that frazzled, messy look. Still, she smiled as best she could and let out a forced laugh, saying all she knew she could manage then, “Yeah?”

Peridot breathed heavily and Lapis watched as her gaze drifted down to their still interlocked hands. She squeezed them softly, “Thank you,” was what she muttered, gentle and not at all what Lapis had been expecting. 

She laughed again, taken aback and knowing if she didn’t she might cry, “For? I haven’t done anything yet,”

Peridot shook her head, “You have, though. Thank you for listening to me. Giving me another chance. I know I didn’t deserve it,”

Lapis searched her face, tried desperately to catch her gaze which remained drifted away from Lapis, down tightly at their hands. She looked sad, almost embarrassed, and Lapis shook her head desperately, emotion welling within her, “Don’t say that,” she whispered back, “Of course you did,”

Peridot frowned, her eyes finally raising to lock with Lapis’s. She shook her head gently but spoke her thanks all over again, a whispered and gentle, “I cannot express how much you’ve helped me recently,” preceding it. 

Lapis tilted her head a bit, a pout falling on her lips involuntarily as she looked up at her, “It hasn’t worked yet, y’know,” 

Peridot smiled, shaking her head again, “Not that. Just,” she trailed off briefly, searching the room before focusing again on Lapis’s eyes, “Being there for me. It made it all a bit easier,”

That old bitter sting filled Lapis’s chest, stronger than it had been at all before. It consumed, overpowered, and she had to try hard to hide her frown, “I hope you find her again,”

Peridot nodded, a sad little twinkle in her eyes, “But you’ve been lovely too,”

That somehow hurt more than all else. 

All at once she was overwhelmed with emotion. More than she had ever felt before, countless different feelings bubbling over and squishing on top of her. As they muddled together in her brain, her chest, her stomach, she tried to place them. Organize them into hers and _hers_ , but it was impossible. Overwhelmed, all she could do was feel. She tried, to compensate, desperately to tell herself that they weren’t hers, none of them. But even still, even when she assured herself it was all fake, they were still there; the sensations, the desires, completely unavoidable. 

She didn’t want to be rid of her. More than she could bear she didn’t want it to work. Wanted to try now, as frantically as she could, to get it over with. To act surprised when it failed. But even still it was a lie. She didn’t want to help but even more so she wanted Peridot to be happy. She missed her. She loved her. She wanted her here. She wanted her there.

It was conflicting and terrible and upsetting and quickly she found her eyes watering. The hot, burning jealousy which sat so loudly in her chest, so blatantly her own, fighting with her conscious, with _her_ , drawing her ultimately to tears.

“Lapis?” Peridot asked gently, worried, her soft tone pulling Lapis from her head with a soft nudge. 

Lapis bit back the pain, the tears, and tried to smile up at her, “Yeah?”

“I like you too. You know that don’t you?”

Lapis sighed hard, an unbearable ache sitting heavy within her as she tried to pull together a response which wouldn’t leave her crying again, “Because I look like her?”

Peridot sighed too, running a finger across the tops of their still interlocked hands, “I don’t know. I’m sure mostly yes but,” she fumbled, stuttering through her words before cutting off entirely. It stung and bit at Lapis’s chest but all she could do was frown, those shared emotions stinging and biting in tandem. 

“I understand,” she spoke lowly, bitterly. She shook off Peridot’s hands and gestured back to the circle, wiping her tears with her other hand, “Better try this before it’s too late,”

“Lapis?” Peridot asked tentatively, the words weak, shy, as she took a nervous step back. It was out of place for her, largely unheard of from Peridot and her larger than life personality, but Lapis could feel nothing but frustration, anger, jealousy at the mock sympathy. 

“What?” she snapped, looking up just in time to catch Peridot rushing towards her. 

For a terrible second Lapis worried that this was what it had always been leading to. Some terrible trap completed after months of cunning planning. The reason why Peridot had been suddenly so kind. Suddenly so charming. But before her heartbeat could do more than jump she realized what was actually happening. 

Peridot had cupped her face at once and leant in to kiss her.

Kissing a ghost was an odd sensation. The half pressure of Peridot’s touch just as tingly and cold and vaguely stinging as her hands. The worry briefly occurred to Lapis that she might fall into Peridot if she leaned too far into the touch, if she tried to pull her into her, but nearly as quick as those thoughts occurred were they forgotten. Because as much as she would never forget kissing a ghost, would have thought about it constantly irregardless, that wasn’t the interesting thing now. Instead all she could remember was how she was kissing _Peridot_. 

Her heart pounded in her chest excitedly; the weight in her soul which had hung so heavy just moments before, when she feared Peridot’s departure from her life, busting away, replaced in an instant with gold strokes of happiness.

More than before she could feel the weight of her emotions on Lapis’s. Could feel her assistance as she leant into the feeling, wanting more of Peridot’s touch which burnt pleasant on her skin. Could feel her sigh with her when Peridot pulled away. Could feel her smile alongside her as she watched Peridot after.

Lapis rubbed at her eyes, aware suddenly at how teary she was, and found, as she focused then once again, Peridot in much the same state as herself. Flustered and teary. Although a second glance caused Lapis’s heart to sink. She was not crying with happiness, relief, as she did. 

“I’m sorry,” Peridot whined, wiping at her cheeks furiously, “I shouldn’t have,”

“No,” Lapis insisted, grabbing one of Peridot’s hands and pulling it down so she looked at her, “It’s alright,”

“But-“

“No,” Lapis insisted, a sudden strength, looming and hot and loud and gold, suddenly overtaking her. She was sure that she was helping. Leaning into the feeling with Lapis. Encouraging her words. For once Lapis let her embrace the assistance without any restraint. 

“I’m so glad I met you,” she started, the words rushed and overwhelmed but boisterous and glad, “Even when you were attacking me it was so exciting. I’ve always loved this sort of stuff and I just,” she found the words shifting all at once, going in another way, “Being your friend has been greater than anything I’ve experienced before. It’s so exciting and you’re so funny and I,” she was gasping, throwing her hands in circles and the words kept coming, “I love you Peridot. I do,”

Peridot took a step back, stunned, if smiling sheepishly, “I,”

“She loves you too,” Lapis smiled, “I can feel it,”

“You?” Peridot asked, her eyes suddenly teary, her expression soft.

“It’s hard to ignore. It’s strong,”

Peridot laughed, even when her nose was stuffy and her eyes were shiny and wet. 

“And, Peridot,” Lapis added suddenly, a sudden surge of knowing, possession drawing the words forwards, blending so smoothly with her own feelings, “I forgive you,”

Peridot stopped, growing still as the silver shine of her skin grew softly brighter. 

Lapis smiled even when it stung, “I really do. For everything. Then and now,”

Peridot smiled, tears in her eyes, “Lapis,” she muttered, but her voice seemed far away. 

Lapis smiled, “I do,”

And she did. 

Peridot smiled at her, all at once a sudden genuine look of pure bliss resting on her face. It was as if something had released in her, a great tension removed, and Lapis smiled. 

“Lapis,” Peridot murmured, suddenly glowing much brighter, starkly white. It burned Lapis’s eyes but she couldn’t look away. 

“It’s okay,” she whispered back, “You can go,”

Peridot smiled again, bright and ecstatic, and it made Lapis’s chest lighten even through the bitter sting, “Thank you,”

With a swell and release of silver light Peridot was gone. 

**

Peridot was dazed, confused. The world was blurry and her head was spinning but even through the fog she felt herself tearing up, bubbling happiness swelling in her chest. 

Someone was playing with her hair, rubbing it in calming, familiar little circles. Humming an old, familiar tune. 

She blinked open her eyes, tears already starting to run down her face.

It was _her_. 

She smiled down at her as Peridot blinked open her eyes, a soft gentle smile, the one which crinkled her eyes just slightly, the one she knew so well, the one she had missed terribly, “It took you long enough,”

Peridot laughed through her tears, sitting upright and quickly pulling her into a tight hug, “I’m sorry,”

She laughed too, snuggling closer into Peridot’s embrace, squeezing her tight to her chest, “It’s alright,”

“I missed you,” Peridot smiled, leaning into her touch, the old, familiar smell of her person filling her senses. 

She leaned back, pulling away to tuck a piece of hair behind Peridot’s ear, kissing her on the cheek when it was out of the way, “I missed you, too,”

Peridot was beaming, “I have quite the story to tell you,”

**

In the months that followed Lapis’s world shifted once again. 

She finally moved, if only just across town to live with her work friend, a genuine, kind boy who, Lapis had found, now that she had dropped the incessant nature of her talking about them, shared her love of ghost stories. She formally withdrew from school, if too late for her to not have failed her classes that semester. And while she wasn’t sure yet if it was a permanent decision, she decided that, for now, it was better. Gave her a chance to focus on life for a bit. On working and writing and moving on.

And with her life shifting so suddenly once again she found herself falling into a new normal. A better normal with friends she liked, a collection of oddball writers who frequented or worked at the bookshop she did, a better normal with roommates who cared about her and a home that felt like home. 

But even when it was better it wasn’t all perfect. Peridot’s absence was near impossible to sit with at first. 

With her gone the outside feelings left. The possession, the intense obsession with the house, her being drawn to the cemetery, Peridot’s grave were all removed in a flash. But even with those feelings gone, even without her ancestor’s guidance and emotions leading her, she still missed her. She still loved her. Terribly so. 

She missed having her around. Missed having her tossing teases while Lapis sat on the couch, smirking at her while she wrote her spells; missed hearing as she worked Lapis through convoluted stories, stitched half together through long winded tangents and distractions. She missed her. 

She never would have guessed it. 

For weeks she found herself looking over her shoulder at all hours of the day. Wondering if this time she really would be there, back again and waiting for her. For weeks she found herself disheartened when she wasn’t; wanting her back badly.

It was bittersweet to have the graveyard feel so empty, her home so stale, her knives so unthreatening. But Lapis was happy for her. Happy for Peridot and her great great grandmother. Happy to have helped. Ecstatic to have helped with something of this nature. Peridot deserved it and while it stung, bad at times, it made the pain tolerable. 

Besides, the emptiness of her new normal often left her reflecting and before she knew it she was propping her laptop open on her knee. Finally she had a book to write. A story to tell. One of her own. 

A ghost story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can’t believe we’re already done with this fic! This one consistently went faster than anything I’ve written of this length before and its insane to me that it’s already over. I really was not expecting to meet the halloween last chapter end goal I had wanted from the beginning but here we are!  
> That said I hope this end feels good to all of you. I was a bit worried it would be a bit rushed (I took two chapters from my initial outline out) since I became so firm on this halloween end date when I realized it was feasible but I think it turned out alright in the end  
> Anyway- thank you so much for having read this work! Despite how fast I was forcing myself to go with it I had a TON of fun writing such a long spooky work. I am nothing if not a sucker for a ghost story. Please leave me a comment! And have a wonderful (and safe!!) halloween!!!!


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